Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed
by Grinning Lizard
Summary: An object in the Dept of Mysteries sends Harry 800 years into the past... an adventure of Crusaders, Assassins, Warlocks and Conspiracy, because there's more to saving the world than killing a Dark Lord. HPxAC TimeTravel. Violent.
1. Fire the Chapel, in the Name of God

_Disclaimer:_

_The beginning includes direct excerpts from JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the time in canon wherein the divergence begins, to set up the story and blend into fandom. I take no credit for JK's writing.  
_

...

**Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed**  
Chapter One: Fire the Chapel, in the Name of God

...

"The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant evening," said the woman's voice.

The door of the telephone box burst open; Harry toppled out of it, closely followed by Neville and Luna. The only sound in the Atrium was the steady rush of water from the golden fountain, where jets from the wands of the witch and wizard, the point of the centaur's arrow, the tip of the goblin's hat and the house-elf's ears continued to gush into the surrounding pool.

"Come on," said Harry quietly as the six of them sprinted off down the hall, Harry in the lead, past the fountain towards the desk where the watchwizard who had weighed Harry's wand had sat, and which was now deserted.

Harry felt sure there ought to be a security person there; sure their absence was an ominous sign, and his feeling of foreboding increased as they passed through the golden gates to the lifts.

…

"Where do we go then, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I don't -" Harry began. He swallowed. "In the dreams I went through the door at the end of the corridor from the lifts into a dark room – that's this one – and then I went through another door into a room that kind of… glitters. We should try a few doors," he said hastily, "I'll know the right way when I see it. C'mon."

He marched straight at the door now facing him, the others following close behind him, set his left hand against its cool, shining surface, raised his wand ready to strike the moment it opened, and pushed.

It swung open easily.

After the darkness of the first room, the lamps hanging low on golden chains from this ceiling gave the impression that this long rectangular room was much brighter, though there were no glittering, shimmering lights as Harry had seen in his dream. The place was quite empty except for a few desks and, in the very middle of the room, an enormous glass tank of deep green liquid, big enough for all of them to swim in; a number of pearly white objects were drifting around lazily in it.

"What're those things?" whispered Ron.

"Dunno," said Harry.

"Are they fish?" breathed Ginny.

"Aquavarius Maggots!" said Luna excitedly. "Dad said the Minitry were breeding -"

"No," said Hermione. She sounded odd. She moved forward to the side of the tank. "They're brains."

"_Brains?_"

"Yes… I wonder what they're doing with them?"

Harry joined her at the tank. Sure enough, there could be no mistake now he saw them at close quarters. Glimmering eerily, they drifted in and out of sight in the depths of the green liquid, looking something like slimy cauliflowers. Shuddering slightly, not wanting to look too much at the brains, Harry's eyes searched the outside of the aquarium – the only inscription anywhere on the glass was at the bottom, near Hermione's feet, which read '_programmatium animus conmemoratio_'.

"Let's get out of here," said Harry. "This isn't right; we need to try another door."

"There are other doors here, too," said Ron, pointing around the walls. Harry's heart sank; how big was this place?

"In my dream I went through that dark room into the second one," he said. "I think we should go back and try from there."

So they hurried back into the dark, circular room; the ghostly shapes of the brains were now swimming before Harry's eyes instead of the blue candle flames.

"Wait!" said Hermione sharply, as Luna made to close the door of the brain room behind them. "_Flagrate!_"

She drew with her wand in midair and a fiery 'X' appeared on the door. No sooner had the door clicked shut behind them than there was a great rumbling, and once again the wall began to revolve very fast, but now there was a great red-gold blur in amongst the faint blue and, when all became still again, the fiery cross still burned, showing the door they had already tried.

…

"Right, we're leaving that room," said Hermione decisively.

"But what if that's the one?" said Ron, staring at the locked door with a mixture of apprehension and longing.

"It can't be, Harry could get through all the doors in his dream," said Hermione, marking this third door with a fiery cross as Harry replaced the now useless handle of Sirius' knife in his pocket.

"You know what could be in there?" said Luna eagerly, as the wall started to spin again.

"Something blibbering, no doubt," said Hermione under her breath and Neville gave a nervous little laugh.

The wall slid to a halt and Harry, with a feeling of increasing desperation, pushed the next door open.

"_This is it!_"

He knew it at once by the beautiful, dancing, diamond-sparkling light. As Harry's eyes became accustomed to the brilliant glare, he saw clocks gleaming from every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room, so that a busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of minuscule, marching footsteps. The source of the dancing light was a towering crystal bell-jar that stood at the far end of the room.

"This way!"

Harry's heart was pumping frantically now that he knew they were on the right track; he led the way down the narrow space between the lines of desks, heading, as he had done in his dream, for the source of the light; the crystal bell jar quite as tall as he was that stood on a desk and appeared to be full of a billowing, glittering wind.

"Oh, _look!_" said Ginny as they drew nearer, pointing at the very heart of the bell jar.

Drifting along in the sparkling current inside was a tiny, jewel-bright egg. As it rose in the jar, it cracked open and a humming-bird emerged, which was carried to the top of the jar, but as it fell on the draught its feathers became bedraggled and damp again, and by the time it had been borne back to the bottom of the jar it had been enclosed once more in its egg.

"Keep going!" said Harry sharply, because Ginny showed signs of wanting to stop and watch the egg's progress back into a bird.

"You dawdled enough by that old arch!" she said crossly.

"Goodness," breathed Luna from a distance behind them.

"What _now?_" Harry hissed, whirling to face Luna and the others.

Luna was standing with her back to Harry by a bookcase which was littered with smaller clocks – stopclocks and wristwatches of all variety – and a thick black timeturner, staring at a marble bust of a woman's head, mouth cast open in agony, which seemed oddly alive in the shimmering light from the bell jar as shadows were cast across the cold stone face.

Exasperated, Harry couldn't see anything to have merited such a reaction from her, until Luna turned to the group.

"The Circlet of Ashima!" said Luna reverently, holding a spindly golden tiara in her hands, a look of avarice in her eyes.

"Luna," said Harry impatiently. "We don't have time. Put it back. We have to move on."

She looked up, surprised, as though he'd interrupted her and she'd forgotten he was there. Harry shot her a look, beginning to feel uneasy about them becoming too engrossed in any of the objects in this strange place.

"Yes," she said simply, turning back to the marble bust.

Harry turned to see Ginny already moving towards the door. He beckoned to the others and stepped up behind her, wand at the ready, suddenly unsure of what to expect. Ginny paused at the door, hand outstretched. Harry went to push past her when he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

He turned to find Luna looking at him dreamily, arm still on his shoulder. He hadn't even heard her approach.

"Luna," warned Hermione in a low voice, stepping forward.

Furious, Harry took in a breath to tell the blonde to get her act together, when without another word she raised the golden tiara in her hand and placed it on his head.

Harry was too surprised – incredulous - to react as he felt the metal press his hair into his forehead.

"Good luck," explained Luna, before the world went black.

…

Falling was undoubtedly the best way to describe it.

Harry's world was rushing past him – or was he rushing past it? – and lightness, darkness and everything inbetween flashed before his eyes.

He was falling _up. _Head first. Without much time to consider what was happening, the only thought that solidified in his head as he clenched his jaw was that, thus far, this was the _worst _form of magical travel that he'd ever experienced.

…

With a squelch, he tumbled face-first into the mud and promptly vomited, the golden Circlet flying off of his head and landing in the muck.

Heaving and spluttering, Harry's fingers sought out his wand and he squeezed it for comfort as he propped himself onto his knees, panting, with only a single thought on his mind; _Sirius._

However, nothing in the world around him as it came together before his eyes indicated that Sirius – or even the Department of Mysteries – was still nearby. After recovering and wiping his spectacles, he discovered that he was in a very narrow, crooked alleyway that blocked out the light from the sun. With black, brown and grey outer walls surrounding, claustrophobically close, he thought it looked a lot like Knockturn Alley, with the notable exception of any kind of paving.

What is this? he wondered. A trap by Voldemort – a type of portkey? Was Luna in on it, or was she just being Luna? Was she under _Imperius_? Would they even be able to tell it from the dreamy state she was usually in?

After clutching the crown and reclaiming it from the muck, he rose unsteadily to his feet, deciding that the artefact had somehow teleported him up to the surface. It would be just like Voldemort, he knew, to put him into some hideout in Knockturn Alley, away from his friends, and deal with him there, just like the Triwizard Cup in the previous year took him and Cedric out of the school.

He could certainly hear a commotion in the background – there was shouting somewhere in the distance and a waft of woodsmoke billowed down the alley on the wind, stinging his nostrils through the muck that covered his face.

Pulling his wand out slowly, he raised it and pointed it ahead of him… before deciding against using it. He didn't want to announce his presence if he could help it. And who knew what sort of nonsense the Ministry might cook up if he used his wand now that he was out of the immediate vicinity of Voldemort.

As the image of a crumpled and pleading Sirius forced its way into his mind once more, he grit his teeth, determined to make his way out and back into the Ministry, and set off down the direction that seemed to face towards the noise.

Traversing the alleyway was not easy – Harry's feet were repeatedly stuck in the muck that was weighing down the bottom of his robes, which seemed to be comprised of straw, mud and some other, fouler substance that clung to his trainers, the musky taste of which caught in the back of his throat and made his eyes water.

As he made his way through the alley, past wooden and stone-based building corners and fetid water pools that hummed with flies, he became slowly more disgusted; what dark corner of Knockturn was left in such a state?

At last he reached a wider corridor between buildings. Still there were no paved or cobblestone paths, but he was able to stick to the side of the thoroughfare near the bottoms of buildings and risk losing his shoes less in the harder mud. Looking over his shoulder into the darkness he'd emerged from, he shuddered slightly – if Voldemort had attacked in there, he'd surely have been dead within moments; he could hardly have moved without falling on his face.

The sounds, from somewhere to his right, had grown steadily louder as he'd approached; unintelligible shouts and cries and the sounds of fire crackling filled the atmosphere as he drew slowly nearer. After a few moments catching his breath after his feet slid into the mess once more and he fought to get them free, Harry was brought up short.

It sounded like a riot was taking place just a few roads away. A riot… or a Death Eater attack.

His heart was gripped with terror. Are they attacking London? he wondered, terrified. Have they revealed themselves, and launched an assault against Diagon Alley? That would explain why the Ministry and even Grimmauld Place had been completely deserted… people were out fighting, even as he and his friends had descended into the Department of Mysteries.

_'But Voldemort is in the Ministry,' _a little voice said in his mind. '_So is Sirius. And now your friends – even Ginny and Neville – are in there with him, without you.'_

So this was a diversion. Harry's jaw set in anger and he quickened his pace, cursing the Circlet and Luna and especially Voldemort in furious mutters, hurrying along so fast that when another person went by, it took him a moment to even notice them.

A little man with a bald head in faded brown robes, looking almost like a monk, shuffled past quickly without looking up, not worrying about his feet getting stuck in the mud as he squelched by.

"Hey!" shouted Harry after him, finding his voice. "_Hey_! What's going on?"

The man ignored him, his little bald tonsure ducking into a crevice between buildings and disappearing. Harry had a chilling memory of a shuffling, snivelling Peter Pettigrew in the graveyard a year ago, but knew the man wasn't Wormtail in anything more than stature.

Cursing more vehemently than ever, Harry sped up, jogging down the alley towards the sounds of the cries. He knew that if he could find a shop, he might be able to get in and Floo back to the Ministry atrium before anyone realised.

Or should he help fight the Death Eaters?

Conflicted and growing angrier, he twisted and turned through the winding alley as dexterously as possible for a few minutes more before emerging, quite suddenly, into daylight.

The sight that greeted him as he slid to a halt was one that burnt itself into his consciousness in a way that his first glance through the wall into Diagon Alley, the first sight of Hagrid in a broken, stormy doorway, even his first view of Hogwarts, never had.

It _was _a riot. A riot unlike anything he'd ever seen.

People, garbed in tunics and, if not barelegged, in what looked like girl's tights, were throwing buckets filled with flaming hay through open, glassless windows. There were _hundreds _of them, tearing around and screaming incoherently. They threw rocks – some at each other, some into buildings. A few were wielding _swords._ Women and children screamed out from second storey windows as the floor below them went up in flames. Bodies littered the thoroughfare – still no more than muck and straw and, now, blood – which had been cut down or brained with flying rocks.

Inexplicably, an old woman wearing an ancient green and blue dress hurled herself from a high window into the swell of the crowd with a frail, wordless scream, which ended abruptly as she hit the muck and someone brought a mallet down on her windpipe and the mob of shouting people crushed inwards.

A rush of nausea surged through him.

Standing a little out of the general fray, Harry saw a filthy man with blood running from a gash in his shoulder stagger past, arms full of gold and silver trinkets. With a start, Harry pushed the gold Circlet still dangling from his fist into an inner pocket of his robes, but kept his wand out, although none of the screaming crowd seemed to have noticed him yet.

Wondering what on earth he'd walked into the middle of, he began edging back towards where he'd come from, not turning away from the butchering mob for a moment but feeling gently behind him for the opening to the alley, his stomach lurching uncomfortably as his brain began to slowly register the atrocities he was witnessing.

This, he decided, is _not_ Knockturn Alley.

His every instinct was telling him to simply turn and run and never look back, and at that moment, just as Harry was about to disappear into the alleyway from which he'd walked, a bearded man on horseback rode towards the crowd, waving a club and shouting, a wild look in his eyes.

"I nam but avayler o' th'povereste," yelled the man, whirling his club around his head in a frenzy as the crowd turned to him and cheered. "Do ye, oh povereste, who hath freden th'fundie a eadi cuth's handes, drench a mine burnes th'waters a th'crede o' dyvine ascaypen, an' ye may do his gaily; as th'elde o' thy comers ist hware!"

Harry gulped as the shouting man, club aloft, met his eyes, but the man turned his horse again, riding into the swell of the mob. Harry realised – with no small relief – that covered in muck as he was, from head to toe, he looked indistinguishable from any of the others running about in the street… with the exception of the clean, colourful few who were being pulled apart or battered in the violence.

In some vague recess of Harry's mind he tried to decide if he ought to be grateful that he hadn't walked into a Death Eater attack, or horrified at what it appeared to actually be.

From nowhere, more men on horses – armed, Harry noticed, to the teeth with medieval weaponry – began to trot towards the fray from down the street.

"This is madness," muttered Harry, to nobody in particular, still not quite comprehending what he was seeing. The chainmailed men on horseback began to shout, gesticulating with their spears and swords, and the crowd had responded by throwing rocks. Harry noticed, however, that the mob's leader – the man with the club – was not looking quite so confident anymore, faced with so many adversaries.

"D'Osbern!" shouted one of the armed horseman, his deep, gruff voice carrying easily over the crowd as he deflected a handful of excrement with his shield. "Sargant li paur! Guyerez efacer li caucie!"

There was a brief pause as all eyes turned to the man with the club. Harry watched, entranced.

"As afere deelen th'waters a th'waters!" the man 'd'Osbern' suddenly shouted, to further cheers from the mob, who raised their hands in adulation. "He duheðe ist thy waters. As afere deelen th'éaðmód a th'daungerous an' fel. As afere deelen eleccious a th'badde, as liht a derkhed!"

There was an almighty roar as they screamed his name - "FitzOsbern!" – over and over again, swelling in mass as those who'd hidden in buildings nearby rejoined their comrades, defiant against the dozen-or-so horseman.

Harry couldn't believe that just fifty or so people could be so loud – it sounded like he was in heaving Quidditch stands just after a miraculous catch of the Snitch.

The leader of the armed horsemen, who as a group were beginning to look very annoyed at the flying rocks and muck, handed his spear to a man beside him and held up a crumpled piece of parchment to the crowd.

"Dur un veult d'Arcevêcue de Walter pur -" attempted the man, before he was pelted by several handfuls at once, some of which made contact with his face below the helmet. Spitting out what was either a swearword, excrement or both, he barked "Renaud!" at the man holding his spear.

Renaud rode forward, his challenge met by a loud jeer from the mob. Harry, eyes wide, realised with a jolt that he was standing almost between the two parties, who looked very much as though they were about to come to blows, and began moving backwards once more.

What the man 'Renaud' would have said was lost because at that moment the swelling, pulsing crowd seemed to burst like a dam and, screaming unintelligible warcries, a few men broke free from the mass of people and ran at the horsemen, swinging improvised weapons, their filthy faces masks of wild madness.

Harry turned and ran back down the alley to the sound of those crazed few being cut down. Blades hitting flesh was the most horrific sound Harry thought he'd ever heard. There was more screaming and shouting and the barking of orders in French before he felt, like a strike between the shoulder blades, the sound of the charging line of horsemen meet the crowd.

Cries of anger became terror. Jeers became howls of agony. Another, fouler smell pierced the air as stomachs were torn open with spears, gushing their acids into the muck.

Harry didn't just run, he _flew_ – there was nothing else for it. He had no idea what sort of nightmare he'd fallen into and had no idea how to wake up from it, so he ran as fast as his legs could carry him, struck with disbelief at the sequence of events that had led him to this point and numbly thinking of nothing but his own survival.

Considering, chest heaving as he ran, he knew he was _there_. It wasn't right – the where and when were off – but he knew he was there, with real people in a real situation, and somehow… somehow, he was there. The cold, sticky mud that clung to his ankles, the hoarse itch in the back of his throat, the pointy, bulky shape of the crown in his pocket that dug into his side, the weight of the mud on his robes… it was all far too real to be a dream.

To his horror, over the blood-curdling screaming and clash of weapons, a sound took precedence; a horse was following him down the alley, a few corners behind him. That meant a horseman likely was as well.

Why are you chasing me? thought Harry desperately. What have I done?

Terrified in a way he'd not been since the Dementor attack during the summer, certain that at any moment he'd be butchered by a sword-wielding maniac on a horse, he cast a quick '_Lumos!_' to better light the way – _Ministry be damned! _- as his eyes were not adjusted to the darkness. Wand held before him, he felt more confident and ran farther, sure that by now the alley would be too narrow for a horse and rider to squeeze through, sure that he'd be safe in just a few more yards, sure that –

His foot jammed into a sinkhole and he went flying, wand spiralling out of his hand and landing tip-down in the mud as Harry's face was driven by the full force of his own velocity and bodyweight into a stinking pool of liquid muck.

Sound cut out and once more the world went black, but a different black this time – a fetid, muddy black that drained away as he wrenched his head back, gasping for air, and a little light and sound flooded back into his consciousness.

He tried to wipe his eyes clear, but the disgusting mixture covered his hands and only made the situation worse. He spluttered and moaned in desperation as he heard the horseman draw closer.

"_Accio Wand!_" he tried, his voice croaking, but nothing happened.

As the hooves thundered through the squelching mud, echoing off of the wooden walls, Harry blindly tried to find his wand. His hands slipped through the slimy, putrid mud as they searched for the solid comfort of the hardwood. Harry's heart was fit to burst and he thought he might pass out.

The horseman was almost upon him.

_There!_

He dove, flicking mud up into the air as he rolled onto his back and pointed his still-aglow wand at the corner he'd just come around, as a man ran through – and tripped over Harry's legs. In shock as the horseless man went flying, Harry stared after him for a moment before returning his attention to the pursuing rider and steed.

The huge stallion shouldered its way through the narrow gap and advanced quickly. It was going to trample them. With nothing in his mind but fear, Harry closed his eyes, wand outstretched, and whispered, "_Stupefy!_"

The light from his _lumos _extinguished and a flash of scarlet replaced it before everything went dark. There was an inhuman grunt and Harry shielded his head as the horse, stunned in the underside of its neck, collapsed and threw its rider to the floor. Harry's life flashed before his eyes as the rear end of the horse came crashing down towards him.

…

With a groan, Harry came to, pain shooting up his arm and jolting him like electricity.

He was in a stone room with a wooden ceiling – but not at the Ministry. Not anywhere he recognised. The vaulted wooden ceiling he was staring at was dark, save for the flickering relief of candles and flaming torches. But no light from a bell-jar or blue-flamed candles or brain tanks – Harry couldn't believe he missed the brain tank, but he'd rather have seen that chilling sight at that moment than any other.

Harry turned his head with some difficulty – nearby stood a small group of men, including – to his surprise – the man FitzOsbern who'd been swinging the club and riling up the crowd. They were speaking in low voices, most of them nursing injuries and one of them having his bare, bloody knee seen to by a monk.

He was in a church. A modest, simple church with stone and mud walls, with an altar, benches and door. He was currently laying on one of the benches.

Lifting his arm, or trying to, Harry saw it'd been wrapped in grey rags and set to a splint. The memory of the unconscious horse tumbling towards him came flooding back and he groaned again.

"Dede bie elde, deuine," said a voice nearby.

Harry, teeth clenched in pain, turned his head to the other side. A mournful looking man, dressed like the others in a strange, brown tunic-shirt and dull leather tights with a mallet in his belt, was staring at Harry.

"Sorry?" grunted Harry, trying to use his rudimentary Occlumency to blot out the pain.

The man with the hammer frowned.

"Esse normaund?" said the man. "O angles?"

"I – I don't understand you," Harry said slowly, breathing deeply.

The man tutted impatiently, turning to the others, saying; "Hit wæcnan, Will. Heden s'bresten, biþenchen, o hit normaund. Abaue."

FitzOsbern strode over, having cleaned his face a little but still for the most part covered in dried mud. Harry saw now that his thick, wiry beard was almost as long as Dumbledore's. He nodded to Harry where he lay, and smiled shortly.

"Mèrcé," said FitzOsbern, before seeming to consider. "Canne cors crées arriol, hardil?"

Harry shook his head helplessly, looking from the man with the hammer to FitzOsbern.

The latter held up Harry's mud-encrusted wand between two fingers, and Harry froze.

"Arriol," said FitzOsbern pointedly. "Sorcíe."

_Guess I don't have to worry about the Statute of Secrecy_, Harry thought suddenly and inexplicably. He raised his uninjured right arm slowly and pointed a finger at himself.

"So – Sorcíe?"

"Mi Deau," breathed the monk who'd been treating the other man's knee. He crossed himself and ambled off down the chapel.

FitzOsbern nodded, with a smile on his face that looked predatory. When he wasn't bellowing to a crowd, he looked quite unsettling, Harry thought.

"I don't speak French," said Harry, wincing. He'd guessed it was French by the noises he made – similar to the Delacours he'd met last year though more guttural, like Madame Maxine's dialect. "Do you speak English?"

"Hmm," said FitzOsbern in a completely different accent which sounded almost German, frowning once more. "Thou carpede ellende, deuine. Aut fremde; lond's sondry. Hight Palmere?"

FitzOsbern sketched the sign of a Christian cross on his chest.

Harry let it wash over him, moaning in despair and feeling queasy. He was stuck here – in a crooked church in this strange place where nobody spoke English and everything seemed to be stuck in the Middle Ages. They knew he was a wizard, but he hadn't seen a wand on any of them, and now this man thought he was some kind of priest wizard.

So, Harry considered forlornly, am I stuck in the past, or some future Voldemort's descended the magical world into?

He turned once more to the man, ignoring the throbbing in his arm, saying; "I'm Harry." He tapped his own chest once more. "Harry."

"Ay," the man said with an acknowledging nod, before putting his forefinger against his own chest. "Guillaime FitzOsbern, Forspeak o' pov'rest."

Harry thought he understood that, after all that he'd seen – he 'spoke for the poor'.

There was suddenly shouting near the other end of the church. Most of the men ran down towards the commotion but after a moment FitzOsbern turned back to Harry, leaning over him and speaking suddenly like a desperate man.

"Deuine – aed we – min cuth haen't ariue apoint!" hissed FitzOsbern. "Dede mine elde! Craue, bowe!"

Harry got the gist – he was asking for help. That much was clear. But Harry was exhausted and his broken arm was shoot pain through half of his body – he was apparently stuck in a strange world and desperately wanted to get back to the Ministry… speaking of which, how long had he been unconscious?

Struck by another thought, he awkwardly reached his right hand into his pocket – the circlet was gone.

"Where's the crown? The – the circlet?" asked Harry, staring at FitzOsbern angrily for taking away what had got him into – and would hopefully get him out of – this mess.

The man handed him his wand.

"No," breathed Harry, but thanked him silently when he felt the wood press into his palm. "Where is the crown? The golden tiara? Circlet? Erm… hat!"

He tapped his head with his wand, gesturing, lost for words that might have translated. FitzOsbern's eyes brightened and he nodded, then leant down and picked up something from the floor near the bench. When he saw it, Harry's heart sank.

It had been crushed. It was a spindly, soft thing anyway, and obviously either his weight or that of the horse had flattened it in his pocket – whilst still in one piece, it was bent so severely it wouldn't go back on his head. Harry doubted that with his arm in the state it was he'd be able to bend it back, either.

He sat up, groaning, wishing he'd simply tried to put it on again when he'd first got here, cursing his own stupidity, and knowing he had to find a wizard healer soon… his arm was killing him.

FitzOsbern held the Circlet out reverently in a cruel parody of Luna in the Department of Mysteries, and when Harry met his eyes he shook the golden headpiece slightly, asking; "Gramméire?" is what sounded like French, and then in the Germanic language; "Fayerye o deuine?"

The banging and shouting at the other end of the church grew more significant. There was just too much going on to concentrate, Harry decided. One step at a time.

He put the circlet back in his pocket and FitzOsbern's face fell, until Harry raised his wand and gestured for him to help him to his feet. After a moment, the man complied and Harry, feeling sick from the pain in his arm, swayed slightly where he stood, loosening his clammy grip on his wand, and attempted to take a step forwards.

Deciding that Harry could manage on his own, FitzOsbern nodded once and raced off down the hall, snatching up his billy-club from a pew as he passed. There was some shouting and banging for a little while longer while Harry got his bearings and made his way to the centre aisle of the church before it went, suddenly, deathly quiet, save for a reedy hymn a monk was humming, huddled in the corner on his knees.

Then Harry smelled smoke.

His eyes widened and he stared at the large door, which was allowing smoke in at all the cracks, and he raised his wand as the shouting resumed inside the church and some of the men ran for water.

"_Ag – ague – agua…"_ stuttered Harry, his brain clouding and making him unable to remember the incantation. "_Agua – aguamo…_ Damnit!"

It was a 6th Year spell, which Hermione had taught he and Ron so that they might gain extra credit in their Charms OWL. It was only a few weeks ago… he'd forgotten the damn thing in the exam, too…

The outside walls, which though made with misshapen stone was little more than dry mud and wooden support beams, were beginning to catch. There were very few windows in the church – Harry couldn't remember whether this was good or bad for fires – but everything became brighter as the doors to the church began to glow from the heat.

Harry was forgotten. Monks were singing defiant hymns or muttering vehement prayers at the altar as the men-at-arms at the other end of the building rushed to try to contain the fire. FitzOsbern himself lifted a great rock basin off of its pedestal and spilled the Holy Water against the door. Some began to wrap rags around their mouths.

Harry stood in the middle. His brain was swimming and he was having trouble keeping his balance – combined with the pain was the heady, smoky atmosphere from the fire and incense and candles, his throbbing arm clouding his vision…

He coughed, doubling over, nearly falling. He couldn't remember the bubble-head charm, flame-freezers, water conjurers… he was useless. He felt like he was dying.

"_You _are_ dying, you idiot,_" a voice in his head suddenly hissed. He stood straighter. "_You bloody useless wizard – couldn't save Sirius, couldn't save your friends, couldn't save these innocent monks or a man who's asked for your help… couldn't even save yourself._"

With that, things clicked into place with the bang a roof beam made as it fell to the stone floor.

"_Aguamenti!_" he screamed, pointing his wand at the door. A torrent of water rushed against the wood and hissed and fizzled as it made contact with the heat, beating back the flames a little. Harry opened his mouth to cast again when a thud from above him made him look up – the roof was already catching. Another beam dislodged and he barely cast a "_Wingardium Leviosa!_" before it landed on a pair of monks by the altar. He lowered the beam harmlessly to the centre aisle. The noise of the rushing flames was terrible and all-consuming, but the monks, oblivious, went on praying.

It suddenly struck him, despite how dreadful he felt, just how bad this situation was – two monks had nearly just been killed – two real people. The likelihood was that everyone in this church would die, at the hands of the men outside – probably more armed horsemen – who had set the building on fire. FitzOsbern, these monks… everyone in this church would die unless he did something about it. He was the only wizard here. He didn't have his friends, or Dumbledore or anyone to back him up… it was down to him.

It was a sobering thought.

Casting upwards blindly as black smoke consumed the ceiling, he cast multiple "_Reparo!_" spells at the vaulting roof, willing it with all his might to stay up. Turning towards the altar, he stabbed his wand in the air towards the sparsely decorated wall and shouted "_Reducto!_" over the flames, blasting a three-foot circle in the mud, brick and wood to dust. The stone pillars in the building trembled slightly with the loss of a support beam in the wall, but they held.

He turned back to the front door. Even from half way down the church the heat was unbearable – everything there was bathed in orange and the armed men just black blurs against the hot glow. He shouted and his voice was lost in the maelstrom.

He cast a spell at his head – pronounciation was an issue when he couldn't hear and half of the oxygen was being sucked from his lungs by the fires above. The bubble-head wasn't totally successful but he had a cold, clear mask over his mouth and nose which supplied him with clean air. He raised his arms and began to make his way down towards the doors.

Still shouting – although he realised that they all were as well – and feeling as though the skin on his face was burning to a crisp and peeling away, he felt another tremendous rumble from above and saw the ceiling, despite his '_reparo'_ charms, begin to give way. He grabbed the arms of the two men nearest him – they looked at him with narrow eyes, faces blackened above the sooty rags around their mouths, before staring towards the hole near the altar when he pointed. After a moment, they ran immediately, leaving Harry with the others.

He swore violently into his bubble and turned back to the men nearest the door when without warning it burst open – daylight flooded in to mix with the horrendous orange fireglow and the fresh air rushing into the room made the fire burn hotter and brighter, enveloping the doorway and everything in front of it. Black smoke billowed around them all.

In horror and on reflex, Harry had time to cast a single-person Flame-Freezing Charm, flailing his wand wildly. He wasn't sure who it had got, if anyone, as nearly everything in front of the door and the entire open space was engulfed in blazing fury, looking to Harry where he stood as though they were within the very jaws of Hell.

He turned and ran, extinguishing the blaze on the bottom of his robes as he did so and thanking Merlin he still had so much mud on him, as it seemed to have been slowing the fire's progress across his clothing.

Next to the hole in the wall of the church – out of which most of the monks had already disappeared – one monk was attempting to pull a comrade through. The second monk, who was steadfastly refusing, had planted his feet in front of the hole and seemed determined to stay inside and burn up with the church.

A cross-beam landed right next to Harry, showering him in sparks and embers, and he cast a wordless Banishing Charm at the foremost monk, magically shoving the two out of the hole forcefully as he legged it towards them, jumping over a beam that fell in front of him, certain beyond certain that he was about to die.

The rumbling in the ceiling grew louder and the walls began to cave into the fire and it seemed, as he neared it, that the hole was growing _smaller_...

There was an almighty groan from the foundations, and Harry dove through.

He landed, unceremoniously, on the back of one of the monks he'd banished through the wall as the church crumbled inwards behind them in a great, puffing ball of flame.

White hot pain shot through his arm.

Harry rolled, scrambling and grunting, to get up, anxious to get away from the blazing church and moving awkwardly, stiffly, away from the two monks in the mud, holding his arm gingerly and sure he'd aggravated the injury beyond repair. He had burnt black splinters in his legs which he didn't dare stop to remove just yet. He was certain his hair was singed and doubted the continued existence of his eyebrows.

And, he realised, he hadn't had his glasses on since he'd woken up – so they were still in the inferno somewhere. Despite the annoyance of this particular revelation, he was alive. The cool evening wind was refreshing on his raw face and, with a start, he remembered to cancel the bubble-head charm at the last minute. The acrid smell of burning filled his nostrils and he wiped his eyes, not having realised they were watering.

Filled with a sudden empty coldness, he made his way around to the front of the church, keeping a safe distance from the burning skeleton of the structure, because he wanted to see – wanted to look into the eyes of – the kind of man who would burn down a church full of people.

In front of where the doors had stood, FitzOsbern was somehow still on his feet. He was remarkably uncharred – _so the flame-freezing charm did hit someone, _thought Harry – and stood defiantly, staring at the man on horseback who'd spoken to him in front of the crowd when Harry had first arrived. The armed horseman – leading considerably less men, now – was talking to him.

FitzOsbern, most of whose beard had been burnt right off of his face, replied – Harry realised he could barely hear a thing after the roar inside the church.

Without further preamble, the armed man on horseback leant forwards and pushed his sword into FitzOsbern's gut; the burnt man fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. The horseman looked down impassively, cleaned the blade on a saddle-cloth, and turned his horse around, signalling to the other horsemen to bring him along.

It was done with such coldness and malice that Harry shuddered, disgusted, and had to look away from the injured FitzOsbern as he was dragged over a saddle, holding in his own entrails… the man who had asked for his help.

The man who was now dying.

Harry staggered away, eyes watering once again, wondering where – and when – in the world he could possibly be.

…

_Thank you for reading. 6995 Words Approx._


	2. A Tree in the Room

_Many thanks to those who reviewed. Hope you enjoy._

_..._

**Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed**  
Chapter Two: A Tree in the Room

...

With a heavy sigh, Harry regarded the pile in front of him.

His wand, the handle of Sirius' knife, some screwed up parchment, the crumpled Circlet, some Floo powder from Umbridge's fire – but when was floo even invented? – and, in coins, eleven Galleons, one Sickle and four Knuts.

Not much, he thought. Though the golden galleons might go a long way.

He'd had two sickles but had managed, after much effort and gesticulation, to swap one for a few loaves of hard, seedy bread. It seemed to be all that food vendors in the town sold, apart from raw vegetables or dark, stringy and rather suspect meat, and Harry thought he'd avoid chewing raw onions and unknown animals for as long as he could help it.

He wished he had his invisibility cloak so that he could escape the scrutiny of the crowds for a time, but as far as he could recall it was still in Umbridge's office; he got a great many strange looks in his filthy school robes. Which was ironic, he considered – he thought the lot of them were a lot stranger dressed than he was.

He'd managed to discern a few things in the night and day he'd spent there – foremost that sleeping outside was the most unpleasant thing he'd ever experienced. He'd also worked out that he was undoubtedly in some sort of medieval time – unbelievable, but considering how many things he'd thought were unbelievable prior to this that turned out to be true it made a little more sense – and that he was no closer to being able to communicate with anyone than he had been at the beginning.

He awkwardly swept his meagre belongings off of the barrel and into the inner pocket of his robes, including Sirius' knife – though he wasn't sure why, as it was just a useless handle now. Perhaps so that he'd be able to remember exactly why he needed to get back – if he really had gone back in time (again), he theoretically would be able to go back to the same moment he'd left in. Although… did time turners go forwards, or only backwards? He couldn't remember what Hermione had told him those years ago… did it apply to something that _wasn't _a time turner?

It was bizarre, but if Harry hadn't had the experience with the Time Turner on that dreadful night in his third year, and learnt first hand how fickle Time Travel really was, he would likely have simply broken down, at a loss. Why had he ended up wherever he had?

He rubbed his eyes, which still watered periodically from the thick, putrid air – his sense of smell had grown attuned to it but he was uncomfortably aware that it still hung there. From the dark doorway he was sitting in he made his way unsteadily out.

The doorway, barely out of the fetid thoroughfare, had been his bed for the night – he'd managed just an hour of uncomfortable, terrified sleep. He wondered if he'd have been able to sleep better if he hadn't seen FitzOsbern stabbed in front of the church, or even if it hadn't been quite so _dark_. The pain in his broken arm hadn't dulled at all through the night, either – after the heat of the chapel, the colder it became outside the worse his arm hurt, serving as a persistent reminder that no, he wasn't dreaming and yes, this really was happening.

Yawning, he began to wander aimlessly along the streets once more, looking for some sort of landmark – he knew nothing about the middle-ages, if that was what this was, and wasn't sure if he'd be able to recognise anything, but hoped something would give him an idea as to _where_ he was even if he couldn't work out the exact date.

The muddy roads around him, considering the riot that had taken place yesterday, were actually quite well-populated – the bloodshed hadn't stopped these people from going about their daily lives. They were simply, inexplicably unfazed and in the midst of the flurrying activity there seemed no end to the masses of people squeezed into the narrow streets, and no end to the tasks they had set themselves – women with weaved wicker baskets of cloth or vegetables who bustled around with puffing cheeks; men carrying heavy barrels or beating material with bats, calling jovially to one another and being answered sullenly at equal pitch; vendors at ramshackle stalls proclaiming their wares in their strange, oh-so-foreign tongue, holding glittering trinkets or lean, sickly fruit aloft…

The buildings around him were predominantly single-storey, and some were crooked enough to put The Burrow to shame. Almost everything was built in wood and the newer buildings stood out, pale and clear, whilst the older buildings were rotting masses of decades-old mud and black, rotting wood. Bar one or two richer-looking plots, the only things he'd seen that weren't built entirely out of timber were the Churches – some had stone foundations, others were built entirely out of bulky rubble and crumbling grey mortar. As Harry stood, staring along a larger road, he thought the scene stretching away in front of him looked like a giant, half-closed zip – at one end, a weary, half-built stone bridge over a huge river, and stretching the half mile to where he was standing on either side of the stinking, muddy thoroughfare were the buildings – the misshapen teeth of the zip, ready to close and swallow up the stinking thoroughfare.

A woman in a dark crevice exposed herself to Harry with a broken smile. His cheeks grew hot and he hurried past, her jeers following for a short while.

The people had a certain oafish, rugged look to them, a little like Crabbe and Goyle had. More than half of the occasions when others had looked at him, both male and female, they'd sized him up, eyes raking down his robes, obviously wondering whether he had anything on him of value and finding, at a glance, that he wasn't worth the bother. They were almost exclusively dressed in brown or grey rags – though whether they had begun as monotone articles or were simply dyed by years of living in filth, Harry couldn't fathom. The exceptions were the monks and the occasional richer-looking men and women on horseback, accompanied by huge retinues of armed soldiers and other retainers, all clad in bright, striking greens and blues and throwing silver coins to some of the more brave members of the poorer mass who would risk being trampled by the dozen horses for the chance to catch a fleeting piece of precious metal and whisk it away into the folds of their rags.

There were an unbelievable number of animals – donkeys or mules pulling downtrodden carts; huge horses with riders or being led at reign; mangy, underfed, half-wild dogs tied to posts all over the road, barking at passers-by or lying in the filth, staring mournfully at the food on sale nearby; a few cats, darting after the hundreds of scattering rats that ran between the feet of oblivious denizens… Harry didn't think he'd ever seen so many animals. He dreaded to think what other creatures might be within the muck and filth in the road, or under those few buildings constructed on stilts.

Harry couldn't shake the idea that he was still in England, though he had no real reason to believe that. The sun was pale and managed to take away the bite of the chilly wind, but the horizon was covered in heavy cloud and the air was laden with moisture. Most of those around him didn't seem to notice – presumably, it was usually like this. A British Summer, he couldn't help but think.

But it could be anywhere in Northern Europe, Harry reminded himself, not daring to hope that whilst he might be eons from home chronologically, he might not be eons from home geographically – some vain hope existed that being closer to where the Department of Mysteries and Ministry would end up being would assist him in the inevitable quest to return.

But it was not looking good.

Harry came to the outside of what looked to be some sort of early pub – but despite the early hour of the morning, the tavern was heaving with murmuring patrons. The noises that drifted out were that of slurring camaraderie and were a lot more inviting than the bustle of the road he was on. At a loss for anything else to do, Harry went in.

Different smells in here – urine and stale beer being prominent. A few people looked up from their stools around a squat table and one old man actually nodded to him in an almost friendly way, so that Harry had to resist the urge to hug him for being the first person to show the slightest sign of friendliness who hadn't been stabbed outside a burning church.

Speaking of which, the smell of wood smoke from the hearth in the corner brought back the painful memory of the previous day, glimpses of fleeing monks before his eyes, before he could bring himself back together. It was some warmth, at least, after a shivering night.

He walked towards the bar, jostled a little by two huge, barrel-chested men who were laughing uncontrollably, faces red and puffing, at some private joke. One clapped his shoulder, slurring something, but let him pass, lifting his iron tankard in mocking salutation and cracking into peels of heaving laughter once again.

When he reached the bar, which was really just a table with two barrels behind it and a stern, sniffling woman in her twenties, he felt carefully in his pocket for a coin as she put down a wooden cup of pale, watery liquid.

He smiled thanks, lifting out his last sickle as it was the only thing he knew had worked and didn't want to risk getting out a handful of gold in front of the drunken, impoverished patrons. She scowled at him.

"Ach dewle," she muttered, holding up the glinting sickle with spidery fingers, scrutinising it carefully. "Disesful."

But she folded it into sleeve, still scowling at him. Harry had expected change of some sort, not knowing what anything here was worth, but instead she crept off into the shadows for a moment.

He was certain he'd just overpaid, he considered sullenly, lifting the mug and sipping the mixture – bitter and a little sour, but definitely alcoholic. It would do to quench a little of his thirst.

After a minute or two or clattering around in the corner, the woman shuffled back, teeth gritted in discomfort as she planted a bowl with cold brown stew and a husk of stale bread in it in front of him and gestured upwards, behind Harry.

"Choys," said the woman, still pointing. "Oht loft roomth yon grecen."

Harry turned to see where she was pointing – a narrow, crooked staircase went up into the shadows.

Ah, thought Harry. It's an inn, not just a tavern, and I think I've just bought a room.

He nodded to her, holding the bowl of stew and bread in his injured hand gently and lifting his cup in the other, and made his careful way through the crowd and up the creaking staircase. He would absolutely take this opportunity to escape from this strange new world for a while.

The corridor at the top was impossibly narrow – merely a space between walls which Harry had to turn sideways to pass through. There were two doors – one to his left, shut and with rather loud snores emanating from it, and one at the end. This second door was shut also, but drenched in shadow and silence.

It held the quiet promise of solace.

As Harry reached it, he simply pushed against it for it to open – inside was just about the sparsest, smallest bedroom he'd ever encountered, reminding him very uncomfortably of the cupboard under the stairs where he'd spent most of his childhood.

Half of the room was made up with a sloping ceiling/wall with a wooden flap in its centre, and nestled awkwardly under this was a straw-and-rag floor-level bed. There was a chest right next to the door to the room which held a tiny, flickering candle, next to which Harry deposited his stew and beer… he couldn't quite understand how, but the cupboard under the Dursleys' stairs was actually _better _than this place in a lot of ways.

After taking a moment to get his bearings in the oppressive space, Harry adjusted his sling with a wince and went to the window flap. After fiddling with the latch he managed to get it open – it arched outwards, onto the pitched roof of the inn, letting the pale daylight spill through. The noises from the street outside did battle with the sounds coming from the tavern below, and Harry took a breath of the fresher air before settling uncomfortably down on the straw bedding and putting his head down.

The ceiling, sloping away, seemed very close to his face – he could make out the grains in the wood and termite holes just a few inches from his nose. The bedding was old and musky and scratched uncomfortably against his neck. His eyes ached, constantly, and he knew he was probably straining them – his glasses had been lost to the fire in the church the day before, and while his eyesight wasn't completely awful he had grown accustomed to everything around him being just that little bit clearer and more in focus.

The church coming unbidden to his mind once again, the terror of just what he was – a stranger in a foreign and violent world – threatened to catch up with him and he closed his aching eyes, gritting his teeth and refusing to cry as his helplessness began to catch up with his tiredness.

I'll get back, he promised himself. I'll get back and I'll find my friends and I'll save you, Sirius. This isn't real – this isn't going to –

There was movement behind him.

He started, jerking his broken arm and causing himself yet more pain, as he rolled over to manoeuvre himself out from under the sloping ceiling to see who the intruder was.

A woman… no, not a woman, a _girl…_ regarding him doubtfully. Dressed in a multitude of grey rags with wide blue eyes and thin, frizzy blonde hair… _Merlin, _she looked almost like Luna.

"Oh, God," said Harry. "I'm so sorry – is this your room? Did I go into the wrong room?"

He was embarrassed to feel that his eyes were wet as he regarded the girl in the doorway. He cleared his throat and made to stand up, his one working arm pulling himself up.

"Did I -" he fought himself free from the tangle of straw and rags. "Did – uh… I'm sorry. I'll just – I thought…"

He was suddenly silenced as the girl sighed, and began to pull off her clothing.

Harry's mouth gaped like that of a fish as he watched her. He was still trying to free himself.

Her last layer on the top half came off, revealing a dirty, underfed body, with protruding ribs and small, bruised breasts.

"What?" Harry asked dumbly, having found his voice, heat rushing up into his neck and cheeks. "I'll leave! I'll leave - what are you doing? _What are you doing?_"

She ignored him, kicking off small cloth shoes and piling her removed garments next to the chest.

"Stop!" Harry said, finally freeing himself and coming back to his senses. "Stop it – let me – I'll leave. I'm sorry, I didn't think - I thought this was the room – I didn't -"

He was rapidly silenced once again as her final remaining garment was discarded, leaving Harry with a side view of her battered bare legs. Without further ado, she walked over to the straw bed – a furiously blushing Harry jumped as far out of her way as possible – and she turned to him, looking at him once more.

She met his eyes with her huge blue ones and took his hand, lowering herself onto the bedding.

Then he realised what was going on.

With a muffled cry of terror, fighting down shock and vomit, Harry tore out of the room, garbling obscenities, and nearly flew down the stairs as he rushed to be free.

He shoulder barged his way through the crowd towards the door, knocking at least one tankard from a man's hand.

The patrons' voices rose in jeering chorus as he fled.

…

London.

Delighted in some ways to have figured out where he was, the discovery of St. Paul's at one side of the town – though it was built out of wood and had taken him a while to recognise – dampened his spirits tremendously. He'd been holding onto the foolish hope that he was somehow _not _where he knew himself to be.

Of course, when he realised, there could be no mistaking it – a castle on the other side that would later become (he vaguely remembered) the Tower of London. The half-built stone bridge was London Bridge, stretching over the dark expanse of the River Thames… south of which was nothing but a few houses.

Surrounding those houses and making it almost unrecognisable everything was green… shallow hills and valleys that stretched off as far as the eye could see.

The problem was that he had barely any geographical knowledge of _modern _London… so now that he knew where he was, albeit however-many-years ago it could be, he still wasn't any closer to finding his way out. And he certainly couldn't remember there being such a huge stone wall surrounding what was left of this part of London in the modern day.

For lack of anything else to do and still hopelessly stuck if not hopelessly lost, he decided to go into St Paul's Cathedral – he knew, at least, what monks were. He knew what they did and had some sort of vague knowledge of what they were like. They were the only people who didn't represent such a chasmal unknown in this strange world.

And Harry nervously thought that he probably ought to confess for buying a prostitute, still not entirely comprehending what had happened back in the inn but knowing that these days a piece of silver went a lot farther than it would back home...

Waiting for some men herding a huge flock of noisy sheep to pass, he walked to the open doors at the front of the church and swallowed, forcing down memories of fire and slaughter, before plunging into the darkness beyond.

As he entered, he was struck by the heat and darkness – everything was lit by candle or flaming torches in brackets on the walls. The naked flames were uncomfortably close to the wooden structure and Harry felt his stomach heave slightly. He moved further in, eyes drawn to the shadowy recesses that the vaulted ceiling disappeared into, to the point that he almost walked into a monk.

"Sorry," apologised Harry automatically.

The monk gave him a watery-eyed smile, casting his glance over Harry's attire, before lifting an arm and gesturing towards one side of the church.

"Euwel fynt waybred un a sayt en afyrst, bowe," said the old monk. "Eu bi-loken houeþ."

Harry nodded dumbly, walking cautiously towards where gestured… until he saw the large, lumpy loaves of bread on display.

_'Thank you, Merlin_,' Harry wished vehemently. '_I mean – God… Thank you, thank you, thank you…'_

He broke off a chunk of the nearest loaf, admiring the rest of the display. His husk was stale and powdery but tasted like heaven. His teeth couldn't break through it fast enough.

God bless monks and their charity, he decided.

He turned to find the monk had gone – but the church wasn't empty. Several people sat in pews and knelt in the corners of the structure – all faced the altar at the front. Nobody was standing there giving a service, but they all seemed to be listening raptly.

In that moment Harry felt like an intruder. He wasn't supposed to be here… wasn't supposed to be in this time, among these people. He didn't belong in this church, eating things for free from impoverished monks, and didn't belong anywhere else – this wasn't _his _England.

But where would he belong? wondered Harry. How on Earth could be possibly get back and who – if anyone – could help him? He couldn't speak the language, and hadn't the first idea about time-travel… the things he could remember from the future were jumbled and fuzzy, as though he really _was _from this time and his entire life at the Dursleys' and Hogwarts with Ron and Hermione had been a –

Harry stopped short, staring at a wall, wondering how he could have been so stupid.

_Hogwarts_: It was so obvious – something that Hermione would have put together in two seconds flat.

A nervous giggle escaped him, the idea taking shape in a tiny glimmer of hopeful ingenuity.

Hogwarts was a place he knew he could find wizards… the only place, for that matter. He doubted the Leaky Cauldron or anything resembling Charing Cross was in existence here. And everyone knew Hogwarts had been around for more than a thousand years…

Despite his newfound hope making him was to quite literally jump for joy, the negatives began to weigh down the idea… _when_ was he? He knew where, but _when! _What if he'd gone back farther than a thousand years? What if he got to Hogwarts and saw nothing but hills and a lake… and how was he even going to _get _to Hogwarts? It was in Scotland, he'd always assumed – in the Scottish highlands in the middle of nowhere. What was it Hermione always said..? Yes - it was unplottable. It couldn't be put onto any maps… it couldn't be apparated into, though evidently Harry wasn't going to be able to attempt that. There was obviously no Hogwarts Express, or Platform 9¾ and not even any trains about. The people around him looked like they'd barely discovered the wheel.

Nervously he looked around, almost afraid to be overheard thinking.

Shaking his head at his own stupidity – and more than a little miffed at his own nerves – he began to walk out of the church, desperately trying to drag up all he knew from primary school of History.

He emerged at the front of the church once more. A rich man in red garb pushed his way past, wrinkling his nose, but Harry ignored him. He stared straight ahead and saw the muddy road become a gate in the huge town wall just fifty yards away.

1066 AD, he though absently. The muggle Norman… William the Conqueror?

He chewed his lip in deliberation, cursing the lack of _actual _historicaleducation at Hogwarts, before walking towards the busy gate. What did he have to lose? London – if that really was where he was – wasn't doing a whole lot for him. After all the horrors he'd witnessed the day before and the trial that this day had been, he figured trying his luck somewhere else wouldn't be unwise.

He'd also started to come to terms with the fact that being closer to where there might eventually be a Department of Mysteries didn't really mean he was any closer to getting back to his friends and Sirius.

The thought of his Godfather sent a pang of remorse through him as he ploughed into the throng of people.

People milled to and fro through the archway, with bored looking guards leaning on their spears watching the masses in barely disguised boredom. A few horses and riders went through, causing those on foot to have to dance out of the way in the ditch-cum-road beneath the threatening teeth of the portcullis, and carts took up nearly the entire space when they were led through by crinkled old men or beefy women.

_'I'm walking through a caricature,' _Harry thought as he emerged on the other side.

Rather than disperse, the crowd stayed fairly tightly packed together on the single road that led away before, to Harry's surprise, treetops were suddenly overhead and he was in a forest.

Aware of how surreal being in a thick, lush forest was where he knew there to be busy roads and traffic, he pushed onwards, an idea suddenly starting to form as to where he should head. Within another fifty yards, after going around a curve in the road and losing sight of London's wall or even the towering wooden steeple beyond it, they came to a crossroads. Harry hoped he had enough sense of direction to take him to where he was aiming as he turned left along with one or two others, losing the press of the crowd.

Navigating through thick woodland, even so close to a town he could still _hear_, was much more difficult than he'd imagined. This wasn't like the Forbidden Forest in-so-much as this forest had light and a clearly defined mud track, but the density of the trees and the creaking, ancient _life _of the woods was similar.

Almost without warning he came to the River.

Without breaking stride, the few others that had turned down this route began to continue West along what was little more than a pathway that wound along by the river, grass high on the bank side and trees leaning over from the right. The other side of the river was similar – thick roots stretching down into the water and a jumble of earth and lush greenery made Harry wonder just _how _all of this could have changed… the whole thing, the entire environment, looked timeless.

Before too long they came to a village.

Not really a village, Harry considered. More of a large hamlet, built from the edge of the water and half immersed in the trees. And in less than a thousand years, if he'd estimated right, Charing Cross Road would lead north from there. Nelson's Column would be seen from where he was standing right at that moment.

He felt vaguely disappointed, despite knowing just how much of a long shot it was – there wasn't really any chance of Diagon Alley having been there so many centuries ago, but Harry knew he'd never forgive himself if he'd left before checking.

He took a closer look at the village he was standing in, half of which looked ready to topple into the Thames at the slightest suggestion of wind.

_'Nope_,' he smiled wryly. '_No Leaky Cauldron. Not even a Gringott's.'_

Several squat houses of wood and one built with some stone, a fully stone church, along with what looked like a communal fire in the clearing everything surrounded – plus an old woman scowling at him from the winch of a well, to whom he waved, giddy in his helplessness.

The nearest building to him, however, looked to be a set of stables. Harry was briefly toying with the idea of trying to buy a horse, but knew he'd never be able to ride it. He also doubted that the gold he had on him – despite the amount of scarlet women it could acquire – would actually be able to afford one.  
Running out of ideas, he discretely took out his wand and balanced it awkwardly on his palm, and said, "_Point Me _Diagon Alley!"

Nothing happened – not even a twitch. Harry sighed as he pocketed his wand and, took one last glance around, before turning back onto the pathway next to the Thames.

What on earth would he do now? Harry wondered. He was completely out of ideas and was trying to think as creatively as possible – 'What Would Hermione Do?' had become almost a mantra in his head. He fingered the circlet in one pocket and his wand in the other, wishing he had a broom or something, or that floo powder worked, or that he could – somehow – just drop back into the time he was supposed to be occupying.

After a few moments of walking, however, he slowed.

_'Hold on a moment…'_

Eyes narrowed in suspicion, he turned around and began to walk back towards the little village. He'd walked further than he'd realised, but suddenly had a flash of something he hadn't fully paid attention to when he'd seen.

_'It couldn't be…'_

Striding purposefully into the clearing, he crossed it, ignoring the scowling woman at her well, and walked up to the house that was made partly of stone.

It had no windows and a basic structure and was otherwise unremarkable… except for the engraved markings above the door which read something like; 'don bIBe dRawes sen CCCLXXXII 3er3oIl'

Harry hadn't learnt much history of the middle-ages. Not much that he could remember, at any rate. What he _had_ learnt in primary school was Roman Numerals. It had taken a few moments for it to come together in his head, but they were definitely Roman Numerals.

_'C is century_,' Harry remembered, brow furrowed. '_L is – either twenty or fifty. X is ten and I is one. So that's… three centuries, plus… if it's fifty, plus three tens, it's eighty, plus two. Three hundred and eighty two.'_

He grinned, having suspected as much. There was only one building he could remember in the world that had '382' written on it.

Walking up and barely daring to hope, he knocked twice on the door before pushing it inwards and entering.

…

Harry had almost forgotten what it felt like to _not_ be labouring under crushing disappointment.

_Ollivander's_ didn't look very different on the inside. It had the same wooden counter, behind which were the same spindly stacks, upon which were the same types of wizards' wands, though without little boxes.

Even if Harry hadn't fully thought through what he'd do if he _did _find somewhere that still existed in his day, he was grateful for finding anything.

A robed man emerged from the shadows who looked so much like the Ollivander he'd met at eleven that for a moment he was taken aback – from the confused look he was giving Harry he was obviously not the same man, and was in fact an ancestor, but the family resemblance was uncanny.

Unable to stop himself from grinning, Harry walked up to the counter. The man seemed to shrink back a little.

"Hello," said Harry. "I'm – well, I'm from the future, but I'm a wizard."

The man continued to stare at Harry as though he were a turtle that had burst into song.

Blast – language barrier, of course, Harry realised.

He reached into his pocket and the old man – Ollivander – started to tense up, as though afraid of being attacked. As gently as possible, Harry removed his wand and held it up, between two fingers, for inspection.

The look on the old man's face resembled one he might have worn if that same turtle had begun to tap-dance. He began to stutter away in the strange foreign language that most people seemed to speak before snatching the wand away from Harry and holding it up to the nearest candle, running his fingers down the length of it and jabbering on.

Harry smiled, feeling unduly relieved that he was at least getting somewhere, nodding along sagely to whatever Ollivander was saying.

Finally, after his inspection of the wand, Ollivander turned back to Harry and said, forcefully, "Þere yer giet Þes holegn drawen?"

He sounded almost accusing, and Harry frowned.

"That's my wand," he replied, gesturing. "I'm a wizard."

He tried to remember what word FitzOsbern had used…

"I'm – uh… So – sorcíe?" he tried. The old man's eyes flickered.

"N'fair passetre utile lis Normaunds," Ollivander spat in a completely different accent, slamming Harry's wand down and marching back into the shadows.

Harry swore, using one of Ron's favourites.

"Sorry," he then said, calling after him into the shadows. "I'm not French. I can't _speak_ French, I mean. I need your help!"

There was no sign of the old man. Everything in the shop was still. He tried desperately to remember what FitzOsbern had been saying – at the end, he'd been asking Harry for help. What were the words he used..?

Groaning in frustration, he snatched up his wand from the counter and paced, but it was no good; he couldn't remember. He thought Hermione would even have trouble with this particular puzzle – how could he make people understand him? It wasn't even like French or German… it wasn't a language he knew anyone could speak. Nobody gets taught Olde English or Medieval French!

Ollivander reappeared and Harry jumped.

The old man pushed an inked quill across the counter, gesturing to write with it on the corner of a dusty scroll.

"Canneye maken, bowe?"

"Write with it?" Harry asked softly. "Can I - on what..? On that scroll? No – wait -"

In a flash of inspiration, he pulled out the crumpled parchment he had in his pocket. He unfolded it awkwardly with his one working hand after transferring his wand to the other - on one side was a hastily scrawled 'revision' note from Ron (_Harry, Keep an eye on when Hermy finishes her chapter. I'm dying for lunch - R_). It must have been weeks old. On the other it was blank.

Ollivander was still gesturing.

"I don't understand," Harry said, stubbornly holding on to the note and beginning to get frustrated. "You won't be able to understand what I write."

"A poyntil. Canne yer maken?" Ollivander asked, pointing at the quill.

This is ridiculous_, _Harry thought, going to the counter and flattening the parchment against it. He couldn't remember Ollivander's descendant being this annoying.

He picked up the quill, but before he could even write anything – though admittedly it would likely by this point be something quite rude – the old man had snatched it up.

"For God's Sake!" shouted Harry, red sparks shooting out of the end of the wand his slung hand was gripping. "Do you want me to bloody write or not? I'll _maken_, you sod!"

Further infuriating Harry, Ollivander seemed to find this outburst extremely funny.

Count to Ten, Potter,Harry told himself. _Breathe_.

After Ollivander had reigned in his wheezing laughs, he wiped his eyes a little before squinting at the scrap of parchment that was in Ron's scrawl. The old man hummed to himself as he examined the text.

Harry, teeth still clenched rather hard, refrained from asking the man what was so important about it. He might have been seeing if he could help, he reasoned, even if he could use a good throttling...

Ollivander looked up, seeming to consider Harry for a few moments, eyes glittering disturbingly like Dumbledore's, before he shrugged.

"Kume," he said, beckoning, before disappearing into the shadows again.

It was unmistakeably a gesture to follow him, but Harry felt a little perturbed at the abruptness of his change in demeanour.

Wand now carefully in his good hand, Harry made his way around the counter and into the shadows behind Ollivander, brushing aside cobwebs as he went towards a flicker or orange light.

Unwittingly thinking yet again of the burning church, he suppressed the feelings of nausea and walked into a small backroom that was lit with a fire, over which a black pot simmered.

Harry was reminded of Hagrid"s cabin, though everything in here was obviously smaller and the whole place was earthier and more Spartan. A tiny cot in the corner, a table to one side, some stools, and large stacks of mundane instruments and equipment. There was a small archway on one side into what looked like a primitive workshop, and one tiny window in the corner.

The most distinctive feature of the room though was the tree that grew in the centre of it, leaves and all, at a dramatic angle away from the fire. Ollivander was, at that moment, ducking underneath it to reach the table and stools.

Uncertainly, Harry made his way gingerly through the room, avoiding the bizarre tree, to where Ollivander now bustled with a mortar, pestle and cauldron. He pulled up a stool and perched on it, wand still out uncertainly, as he watched the old man work.

A few herbs, some of which Harry recognised, along with bits and pieces of various animals were crushed in the clay pestle and Ollivander hummed tunelessly, muttering occasionally, as he began to brew a potion of some sort. He upended a water skin into the copper cauldron unceremoniously, throwing the mushy mixture in after it, and added one or two little bits more before stopping to consider.

Lips pursed, he reached into the folds of his robes and rummaged for a few moments before emerging with two things – one was a bundle of parchment sheaves, and the other was a meaty leg from a chicken or duck.

As it happens, the drumstick was not for the potion – he handed it to Harry absently, who took it, before Ollivander wiped his hand of grease and continued to brew the potion. Harry managed to simply hold it for a total of ten seconds before he began to eat – fortunately, Ollivander seemed to have intended this purpose. Harry was finding it harder to get an impression of the man who was currently perusing the sheaves of parchment, double-checking his recipe.

A few minutes later, as Ollivander corked a narrow clay pitcher and regarded his mixture and Harry finished devouring the meat off of the bone, the old man picked up the copper cauldron, careful not to spill any, and carried it towards the fire. With iron tongs he struggled to remove the pot that was simmering and replace it with the cauldron. Using the tongs, he carried the still bubbling black pot back towards Harry.

"Potte ye herte-spon en," the man instructed.

"What?" asked Harry.

"Spon – ye boon, nyce bowe," snapped Ollivander, the pot beginning to shake. "Potten!"

Harry followed his eyes, worried about his intentions, to the chicken bone. He picked it up and gestured with it.

"You want me to - ?"

"_Aye, bowe!_" the old man grunted, hands shaking now too.

Harry dropped the chicken bone into the pot. To his relief, this seemed to be what Ollivander had wanted him to do. The man shuffled the pot through the little archway into the shop and Harry heard him put it down with a relieved sigh.

"Sorry," muttered Harry, turning his attention back to the dilapidated tree.

Glaring, the old man stepped through once more, walking past and moving to the cauldron. The mixture within was beginning to bubble and, using the same iron tongs, he started to stir it gently.

Dangerous to mix with both iron and copper, Harry thought, remembering a potions lesson from the year before. He wasn't about to point this out, though, for a myriad of reasons.

A whistle caught his attention – it was Ollivander, not the mixture, and he beckoned him over. Reluctantly putting his wand back in his pocket, Harry went over.

"Poute," said Ollivander, demonstrating stirring with the tongs. "Poute, ay?"

"Yes. Pout, stir," Harry nodded with a frown, probably reckoning that the man knew just how dangerous this was and wasn't going to risk it himself. He took the tongs he was handed and began to mimic the man's motions.

_'What is this all about?' _He wondered sullenly. '_Is he just getting me to do some of his chores, or something? Is he taking advantage of – of the stupid tourist!'_

After a minute or so, Harry really was ready to turn around and tell the old man to go stuff himself, when he heard a quiet "_Engorgio" _from behind him.

He turned his head to see Ollivander enlarging the square of parchment he'd given him. Harry was surprised – after two solid days of different languages he hadn't expected certain spells to have the same incantation.

When Ollivander had the square to a large enough size – about a foot in length and width – he began muttering different incantations, wand waving over it, and Harry watched, entranced, until the cauldron he was stirring gave an angry hiss and he reluctantly turned his attention to it again.

Only seconds later he felt a hand on his shoulder. He leant away and the old man bent down, taking the tongs from him, shaking the residue off of them and lifting the copper cauldron by its handle delicately. Harry moved backwards out of the way – he went to the table, content to let the man continue working simply out of curiosity. He regarded the now-larger parchment, which apart from size looked no different than it had before. Ron's scruffy handwriting, five times larger, stood out starkly in black ink.

After bustling some more in the next room, Ollivander entered once more, holding a misshapen wooden cup out to Harry with a steaming mixture within.

Harry stared doubtfully for a moment, before taking the cup.

The old man held out a hand signalling him to wait, though Harry hadn't intended to simply drink it, and bent over the parchment. He cast a couple of surgically accurate '_Diffindo_' charms, cutting a scrap from the whole.

When Ollivander held it up, Harry saw it contained the portion of text '_Keep an eye on when' _and nothing else. The old man, eyeing Harry critically, rolled up the segment into a thin tube, folded that tube, and took the cup from Harry. He put the rolled and folded parchment into the steaming cup.

After waiting a few moments, with Harry curious despite himself, Ollivander grunted once more, and held out the cup again.

This time the meaning was clear.

"You want me to drink it?" asked Harry, gesturing, to which the older man only nodded.

He took the cup gingerly… gazing into it he saw the parchment had dissolved.

He cast one more doubtful look at Ollivander before making his decision. This choice had two deciding factors; first, he didn't really have anything to lose, and second, it couldn't be worse than _Skele-Gro_.

He lifted the cup and drank.

…

He woke fairly quickly.

"Urgh," he said eloquently, his tongue numb and a fizzing sensation playing over the roof of his mouth. He opened and closed his lips a few times, the hinges of his jaw aching and a warm feeling flooding up from his throat. His mouth did not feel like his own.

He was still in Ollivander's house – he could see the tree directly above him. He shifted himself up onto his one good elbow… the bastard had left him on the floor. The room was otherwise empty.

_'I bet he knew it would do that_,' thought Harry murderously. '_Last time I ever drink an unknown potion from a stranger… Merlin, putting it like that makes is sound even stupider.'_

He reached into his pocket and, sure enough, his wand was gone. He was surprised to find the crushed circlet and coins still in place… but that said – he'd taken the only thing of value.

He pushed himself up with a grunt, back aching after the hard wooden floor, and walked through the archway into the workshop – there sat Ollivander, with Harry's wand to one side and his own more crooked one nearby, carving into a length of wood.

"I suppose you think that was funny," said Harry loudly, trying to make the man jump, but he slurred it a little.

"Not funny," replied Ollivander, making Harry think he'd banged his head on the way down. "But necessary."

He still hadn't turned around. Harry stood dumbly, suddenly unsure of what was going on.

"What?" he managed.

"Are you able to understand me?" asked the old man casually, still carving. His accent was… implacable.

"Yes…" said Harry, his tongue feeling sluggish. "How exactly are you talking in English? Was this the potion, or have you been playing a trick on me?"

"A real language, indeed," sighed Ollivander, finally stopping his carving and turning to face Harry. "I always speak English; some French, Latin and Greek. You can hear my words, now, and the charms on the paper taught you basic English and French."

"That – it…" Harry had to think for a moment before he could talk. "That seems a little easy."

The man's eyebrows rose.

"Easy? Boy, I brewed a six-century old draught and from memory. Your concept of ease astonishes."

Harry was having a hard time associating the language, spoken with a clipped but varying accent, with the animalistic grunts and hard consonants of what he'd spoken up until that point.

"I've not been able to understand anyone," said Harry. "And now – I've drunk one potion… I've never heard of anything like this."

"Quite rare, indeed," said Ollivander. "Overcome your stupor, yet, or would you like some time?"

"I – no. I don't understand… I can speak English – your English – and French, now…"

"Yes," said Ollivander, and Harry heard the smile. "The last thing I spoke was in French, as is this. A little test. And you replied in kind. Good."

"Is this going to work with everyone or just you?"

Ollivander decided to stop carving and turned around finally.

"Anything in London-English or _Norman_-French," the old man said, spitting the last. "You'll understand an amount of similar dialects, but common sense need also be employed. Your understanding will grow as your brain gets accustomed."

"Right," said Harry slowly, who was ironically at a loss for words. After all the things he'd wanted to know, wanted to be able to ask people, he found they'd fled his mind.

"Now for _my_ question," said Ollivander, standing. "Who made this wand?"

"My wand?" asked Harry in surprise. Such was the resemblance that he almost blurted out '_You made it_' but managed to reign it in. "A – uh – very skilled wandsmith."

"I know this," said Ollivander. "But I desire a name."

"I can't tell you," said Harry, an ominous feeling brewing as he saw a glint of victory in the old man's eye.

"_You_ made it?"

"What?" asked Harry, genuinely surprised. "No – no, of course I didn't."

"Who then?"

Harry wished he had the wand in question in his hand at this moment. The wand maker appeared to have helped him dramatically, but he couldn't possibly fathom how a man who'd seemed so like his own Ollivander could possibly be so imposing.

"You wouldn't believe me," said Harry in a small voice.

Ollivander chuckled. In the darker room, the shadows just beyond reach, he looked positively sinister.

"Sixty winters scouring the world," said Ollivander. "Any wand-makers more skilled than I, I apprenticed myself to before killing."

Harry's jaw dropped in shock.

"My father did so, and his before him, and my son has begun his own. Finding wand-makers is difficult – there are not many wizards and those who are tend to hide - so it is a _competitive_ business. You," he said sharply, holding Harry's wand up, "have the best made wand I've ever seen. Holly… a curious core…"

"Thank you," said Harry, a buzzing in his ears he was sure was his pulse.

"If you'd like it back," said Ollivander, "I would like to know who made it for you. That is, for helping you with your language."

"I really can't tell you," said Harry, certain he was about to be killed… and by an _Ollivander _of all people?

_'I faced down Voldemort, I faced down Voldemort, I faced down Voldemort - '_

"Well, boy," the old man sighed. "Will you consent to answering a few questions?"

Harry barely nodded, eyes only on his own wand in the older man's hands.

"Where are you from?"

"Little Whinging in Epsom," answered Harry quietly.

The man's brow creased as he said, "I've not heard of it."

Harry decided not to mention that it was less than fifty miles from where they were, figuring that the man probably knew where Surrey was at the very least.

"You're too young for the Crusade… did you buy the wand from one who came back from the Crusade?"

"No," said Harry.

"Not from an Arab or a black?"

Harry's eyebrows shot up, but he shook his head.

"Have you trained at Hogwarts?"

Harry's heart skipped a beat and he couldn't help himself.

"Hogwarts exists?" he asked, barely daring to hope. "How do I get there?"

"Well," said Ollivander with a sneer. "If you're brain is busy, try using your _feet_."  
Harry was staring at the fire mantle, searching for the obligatory pot of Floo, when he registered what the man had said.  
"My feet… you mean _walk? _To Scotland?"  
"Just over the wall," nodded Ollivander. "Enough of this; tell me, did you come to England for Hogwarts?"

Harry thought for a few moments, trying to figure out how he was expected to _walk_ to Scotland, before nodding.  
"_Who_ made your wand!" the man suddenly shouted.  
Harry started and stepped back, but kept his mouth stubbornly closed.

"Will you really not tell me who made this wand?" the old man said, suddenly deflating and losing all composure. "I have to tell my son…"

"You wouldn't believe me," Harry said, awkward about the idea of giving Ollivander even the slightest hint when it might cause him to send his son to kill someone. "Please give it back."

Looking mournful and a little pensive, Ollivander stepped forwards and handed Harry his wand. Never had holding the little stick felt like such a relief. Harry stepped backwards a pace or two.

"I didn't want to steal it," said Ollivander, now looking very, very old. "I just need to know who is capable of this."

"Don't worry," said Harry uncertainly. "Um – nobody is capable of this. It isn't – uh… you'll figure it out."

Silence.

With a nod and hasty thanks, Harry made his way to the front of the house and out into the darkening world.

He did not stay to see Ollivander sigh heavily and begin to write a letter on some of the remaining parchment. He did not see the steel in the man's eyes as he wrote to his son.

…

_Author's Notes:_

_This chapter was approximately 8,342 words. Many thanks for reading._


	3. Song of the Misfits

_Many thanks to all those who reviewed. A quick note about what is there already; This story, in chapters one and two, now includes some extra spells, a extra question to Ollivander, an emphasis on silk, and a very, very slight rewording of the aguamenti spell part. None are overly dramatic changes in how they effect things, but they're good minor points and details to include. My infinite thanks to those on the DLP boards, who are too many to name individually, for help with the perpetual improvement of this story._

...

**Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed**  
Chapter Three: Song of the Misfits

...

"There's no words for it," the carter continued. "No word in language that describe it. Evil, it is, and no less."

Harry privately thought the carter had found plenty of words for it. They'd been walking for almost two hours and the only thing that ached more than the soles of his feet were his ears.

The carter's wife cleared her throat loudly from behind them. She did this occasionally, apparently whenever she deemed her husband had said one thing too many. Yet again, the man in question happily ignored the noise and carried on.

"And when he's back, if he even does return, he'll be met with this," said the carter, gesturing widely. "All this that God gave him and he let go to rot. God rightfully gave him. And here, what a mighty country we are! The ague, wars among local barons, starvation rife in the richest of towns… and that spoilt bloody brother of his not lifting a single jewelled finger -"

"For God's sake, man," the wife suddenly barked, making both the carter and Harry jump. "Shut _up_."

It was one of the first sentences she'd actually uttered. They carried on in silence – the carter leading the donkey, which was leading the cart, which carried the woman and their two wide-eyed children, and Harry next to the carter.

They'd not told him their names. The way they behaved, it was almost as though if they _did _have names, they'd long since forgotten each other's. The man would talk on and on about the King – or at least, who Harry assumed to be the King, as the man had been careful enough to not say the words outright – and the wife would strop away, fussing over the children, as the creaking cart tumbled on. The man had encouraged Harry to walk alongside them, likely only so that he had a listening ear, but they'd been generous enough to share their fire and a little stew with him the previous night after they'd finally groaned to a halt when it was too dark to walk further. Harry had made to continue alone, not having anything to share, but the carter's wife had tutted loudly and planted a bowl in front of him, reminding him in an uncomfortable way of Mrs. Weasley.

Harry didn't know what they had in the cart under the canvas, but he'd been uncomfortably aware of how little actual food it was likely to be. The four of them were bone-thin – enough to make Harry look like he had some meat on him – and the children looked positively emaciated. When Mrs. Carter had gone to relieve herself somewhere in the trees, he'd surreptitiously tipped the bulk of his own stew into the bowl the children were sharing. They'd look at him as though he were an angel, which for some reason had made him feel worse. All of them had slept on the bare earth as close as possible to the small pyre, wolves howling in the distance, until the first hint of dawn.

Still in blissful silence, they finally came out from under the treecover and into the daylight. A beautiful landscape surrounded them on three sides now as they followed the thin track through the grass, and despite the threatening clouds, Harry felt his spirits lift just a little. No matter what happened, where or when he was, it really was a beautiful country. So different to the one he was used to. They'd passed through a few villages and then into the almighty forest before reashing this point, and there was an inexplicably wholesome _freshness _to everything that penetrated through the muck and mud that covered him. It alleviated the ache in his legs and his blistering feet in a wonderful way.

"Where you heading?" the carter had called to him the previous day. Harry had been walking a little ahead of them, more than a mile out of London in the direction he was fairly sure was North, and had turned in surprise, expecting some sort of trick or attack – that is, until he saw the children that were with them. "Scotland," he'd replied. "What by Christ are you doing that for?" the carter had asked in surprise as Harry turned to walk alongside them.

He'd had to think about it. He'd answered the carter almost instantly with an instinctive 'It's my home,' which garnered a worried look but nothing further, but Harry had spent the time the carter took telling him that it was dangerous to travel alone and that they were going to York if he fancied the company to put into order why exactly he _was _going to Hogwarts.

He was rapidly becoming more cynical, and was aware of the fact. It was likely that the school wouldn't pay him any heed – if he was really unlucky there'd be only Snape- and Umbridge-like teachers there, and Harry didn't know of a single reason why Hogwarts would be any different to anywhere else in this age. Everywhere was packed to bursting with prostitutes, thieves and men who carried swords longer than their legs. His only defence against this violent world was an 11-inch stick of wood, which had very nearly been stolen from him by the only other wizard he'd yet met.

What was he expecting from Hogwarts? There wouldn't be a Dumbledore there, nor even a McGonagall. He remembered some of the things the Headmaster had told him about the previous School Heads – it seemed as though the further you went back, the nastier wizards became, and the Headmasters and -mistresses of Hogwarts wouldn't be any different. He obviously wasn't going to become a student there - though if Hermione was in his shoes she'd likely take the opportunity to try and retake her OWLs - so what was the point?

His internal arguments had fizzled out by the time he was laying in front of the fire. He was aware by that point that the only reason he was going to the school was because there literally wasn't anywhere else for him. He didn't belong there, in that timeline, and regardless of upsetting the 'No-interfering-with-the-past' golden rule, he had to try and get back. The only people who would – hopefully – be able to help him with that would be wizards, and the only place he knew he could find wizards as a certainty (excluding psycopathic wand-makers) was Hogwarts.

Needless to say that between this revelation and the ceaseless baying of distant wolves, it hadn't been a particularly restful sleep.

Harry saw the tip of a castle in the distance. He'd been vaguely surprised that morning when the thought had crossed his mind that he'd not seen more yet – he had assumed they'd be dotted all over the countryside. The battlements he could see the banners waving from now, however, were a part of a squat but impenetrable-looking grey monster, looming over the nearby countryside. As they got closer, more was revealed. He could see smoke rising from multiple chimneys that were hidden within its walls. With the river running not ten feet away from its gatehouse and weeds creeping up its foundations, it looked to be as much a part of the countryside around it as if it hadn't been built but grown; as inarguably a part of the landscape as a mountain in its place… and about as surmountable.

"Who lives in there?" he asked, unnecessarily pointing.

"Uh – FitzWalters, I think," said the carter from over his shoulder, and Harry realised he'd been involuntarily walking ahead. "Hertford, we're seeing. Good stopping place. Busy town, in there, hopefully some buyers, eh? Should get a meal in the hall, too, 'less there's a retinue or something taking residence. Bloody nobles."

The name 'FitzWalter' meant nothing to Harry, and obviously very little to the carter.

"How far are we from London?" asked Harry, trying to prompt more conversation – despite the incessant rantings of the carter; it was still nice to be talked to at all after a day and a half of not understanding a single word.

"Twenty leagues or so," said the carter, his attention elsewhere. For some reason, he wasn't quite as talkative at this point as he had been for the bulk of the journey.

Harry tried to remember what a 'league' was, or if he'd ever even been taught the term. The translation charm ought to be translating things fully for him, he thought petulantly, realising just how little hope he had of surviving here – even had he known the measure of a league, he had no idea how far it was to Scotland. Hundreds of miles? It could be thousands, for all he knew, and for all the difference it made. He knew Surrey was south of London and London was south of Scotland, though a lot further so, but did he actually have the slightest chance of making it there on foot?

_'And what's going to happen when they leave me?' _He wondered, glancing at the family around him and knowing it was stupid. '_They said they'd be with me until York. How far is that along the journey? Merlin's Boots, Harry, you've flown there in a car before from London… you must be able to remember something…'_

Ron did the navigating though, he remembered. Shaking his head, he resolved to try to think of something else he could ask and determined quietly to become less useless. Knowing the question itself would be hopeless but also still trying to fill the sudden void of silence, Harry asked, "What year is it?"

The carter's wife gave him a strange look, which he caught in the corner of his eye and turned to face.

"It's harvest-time, Year of our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-six," she said, shaking her head. "Don't you Scots go to Church?"

Harry, a little stunned, started to shake his head before stopping abruptly at her sharp look. He saw the carter roll his eyes in his other peripheral.

"I mean – uh, we do, but our priests, they don't – uh – they don't tell us the date, usually," mumbled Harry.

She nodded, as though expecting as much, and she mumbled something that sounded quite like "savages". Harry ignored it.

_Eight hundred years_… he didn't know why he was shocked. He'd known it'd happened, it meant that Hogwarts existed, and it made no difference either way... but something about it being put so bluntly drove it home. He wasn't just in some vague part of history; he'd traveled eight _hundred _years back in time. From everything Hermione had implied two years before, that wasn't even _possible_.

"Monks just as bad," the carter muttered, seemingly to himself. "That archbishop's a FitzWalter or Walter or somesuch... Quiet, now, lad," he said abruptly. "Good lad."

And without another word, he let go of the donkey's bridle hurried off down the track. Ahead, though such was Harry's distraction that only now did he see it, there was a tiny, shaggy horse stuck in the ford of the river, eyes wide and nostrils flaring. The cart behind it seemed to be pulling it down, but the cart's owner, accompanied by two burly bodyguards, was waist-deep in the ford despite his rich clothing, trying to save the cart and it's rapidly depleting contents before the whole lot was dragged under by the current.

The loud cursing of the richer carter travelled all the way up as Harry put a hand on the donkey, trying to steady it, watching as the carter reached them, wading into the water, gesturing wildly.

"Fool merchant," grumbled the carter"s wife behind him. "Trying to get that sized animal through the ford. S'a perfectly good bridge not a mile on."

Harry watched as the carter apparently seemed to be directing the efforts of the three other men, knee deep in the rushing water. Not much, save for the rich carter's swearing, reached them over the roar of the river.

"Suppose you can't name no Apostles, then," said the carter's wife.

"What?" asked Harry, turning again to face her.

"None of Jesus' Apostles," she clarified through pursed lips. "Maggie here can name all of 'em. Show him, Mag."

Harry was more than a little incredulous at the way events were developing. The carter's wife seemed content to completely ignore the rapidly worsening situation in the ford and try to coax 'Maggie' into sharing her knowledge of the Twelve Apostles.

Harry smiled distractedly at the little girl - she only looked to be about eleven – before saying, "I think I ought to go and help them -"

"Not worth the bother," shrugged the carter's wife. "Horse's stuck in, goods all afloat, a richer village downriver and we'll be over in a blink."

As he deciphered this statement, he felt for the wand in his robes, deciding to follow the example of the carter and simply ignore her. He marched off, heading down the rocky track to the river, and she didn't call after him.

The river got louder and louder as he approached, but by the time he got to the water's edge he could hear what the carter was saying. It wasn't directions or assistance… he was shouting continuously about the wares in _his _cart, and how the rich merchant would need to buy them now he'd lost his own.

"Tupperware, all sorts of tupperware," he was yelling. "Let it go, lads – it'll all be under in a minute, don't want you getting dragged down with it. A little Flemish cloth, also – nicely replace those ruined hose – blues and yellows. An alembic I found in Rochester -"

_'Mental_,' Ron said in Harry's mind. _'Completely mental.'_

Harry put his wand in his sling and made sure the pockets in his cloak were secure before wading in.

Moving past the carter, the freezing cold water running around his knees, he gave a shocked "Oh!" as the water reached his hips. One of the bodyguards moved to intercept him, a sharp knife in his hand, but Harry didn't stop. In a small part of his mind, he could imagine what he looked like – hair at all angles, crusted mud on ankle-length robes…

"I'm helping, you idiot," he shouted to the man, moving to the side of the cart, and despite looking as though he'd never been addressed in such a way in his entire life, the bodyguard didn't stop him. "Help with the horse -"

"_Leave_ the fucking_ horse!_" the merchant screamed, practically apoplectic with rage. "Grab the _goods_ – that package, there -"

Harry shook his head, astonished that the translation potion was working _quite_ so well, and duly grabbed the package indicated before it floated out of reach. He slung it onto the cart with a great heave – wrapped up cloths, from the feel of it, getting heavier as water seeped in. Another few bolts of black wool and yellow silk were now too far for him to reach, bobbing away on their wooden spindles; in the blink of an eye they'd been sucked under.

Ignoring whatever else the red-faced merchant was now screaming at him to do, he moved to the side of the cart and gave it an experimental push – it was stuck fast. The current was very, very strong and wasn't budging it an inch. Harry was also very rapidly becoming soaked through – his sling was getting damper by the second and his broken arm was starting to throb magnificently.

Summoning his strength and trying ignore the chill seeping into his bones, he pulled his wand out of the sling where he'd held it trapped against his injured forearm, gripping it tightly against the whipping current. Harry was extremely conscious that he was about to perform magic in front of all of these muggles, and that he needed to be as discrete about it as humanly possible. He took a quick survey of the situation.

One of the bodyguards appeared to have almost given up, and was wading carelessly around, grabbing the few packages that had caught in the brambles on the banks of the river. The other bodyguard was suffering the brunt of the merchant's ire and still heaving fruitlessly against the cart as the merchant used his own arms to try to stop the rest of its contents from sliding off. Despite his efforts, nearly everything that had been on the cart was now in the water.

Still Harry hesitated, five years of wizarding custom now ingrained into him: this wasn't a life or death situation, so could he justify using magic?

Underwater, he put the hand with his wand in onto the flank of the horse. As though breaking it out of a stupor, the beast suddenly began to thrash and shriek, giving great heaves with every attempt to burst onto the bank on the other side of the ford. Harry jumped backwards as the thrashing, frothing nose swung dangerously close to his face, the horse contorting itself into something monstrous in its efforts to free itself.

Was there a justification for magic use?_ Of course. _The horse hadn't done anything wrong, and he could save it if he worked fast.

He steadied himself, wand still submerged in the dark water, and tried to concentrate… never had he needed to use magic quite so _precisely_. His wand, pointing at the cart, shuddered with the force of the current as he tried to hold it straight.

"_Wingardium Leviosa,_" Harry whispered through gritted teeth.

Nothing happened. He tried again, but his teeth started chattering in the middle of the incantation and he diverted the direction of the wand tip, surrendering a little to the current, worried about the effects of botching that spell and seeing Seamus Finnigan's exploding feather in his mind's eye.

The horse threw its head to the side and sprayed Harry's face with water and spit. Desperately trying to summon his energy and ignore the numbness in the lower half of his body and everything else that was happening, he grunted, "_Wingardium Leviosa!_" at the cart one last time, forcing all he could into it, and to his delight it shifted.

But to his horror, the moment his concentration broke, the shifted cart was dragged two or three yards further down the river, slamming into Harry's side, before the cart caught in and sank further into the softer riverbed… the roar of the water was briefly replaced by the merchant's hollering as the remaining contents of the cart tipped into the river and, even better, every time the horse wrenched at it, the cart sank deeper.

Harry swore, using a favourite of the merchant's, before moving to the side of the violent animal, no longer bothering to try and hide his wand. The water was deeper here by almost a foot. He was annoyed; his good arm now ached as well, he was frozen to the bone, and he was dead set on saving the animal.

Before his eyes, though, as he reached it, the horse gave two or three more flails before its forelegs sank into the sediment and its head was submerged. Harry dove down after it into the water.

Blackness and mud thrown up from the bottom hit his eyes before the water did, and he ignored the pain as he searched blindly through the current to find the horse. His arm came to rest on its neck, so he raised his wand and, aiming approximately, mouthed the incantation to the Bubble-Head Charm before finding his feet and extending himself into a standing position once again.

He burst out of the cascading water, spluttering slightly, and wiped his eyes before staring down through the rapidly moving surface and – _yes! _Sure enough, there was the outline of a bubble around the horse's head. More to the point, the beast was still moving, albeit half-heartedly.

There was so much noise combining with the light and threatening to flood his senses that he was essentially working, one-handed, on auto-pilot. He searched through the water with difficulty, as it came up to his armpits, and pulled his feet up periodically from the sucking bed that had captured the cart and the beast, well aware that with every second that passed and each small struggle of the horse's the cart sank lower, dragging the beast down with it.

_There_ – he found one of the pieces of wood that bound the horse to the cart by his knee. He pointed the wand down, moving his leg carefully out of the way, and said "_Reducto!_" into the surface of the river. There was no outwardly discernible sign that it had worked – no flash of light or bubbles – but he felt instinctively that it had. He waved his hand around in the space it'd occupied and felt nothing obstructing it. Searching with his feet, now, he found the other piece of wood, half of which was in the mud and sediment at the bottom, and repeated the process.

Without wasting a moment, he raised his wand to the horse and whispered, "_Mobilicorpus!_" and forced as much energy into it as he could manage…

But not only did the spell have no effect, he realised that the horse itself wasn't moving. He stood stock still for a moment, disbelieving, before he made his way to it and put a hand on the neck – it was strained and lifeless, already stone cold, and the long shaggy hair of the animal ebbed and flowed with the varying strengths of the current.

The horse was dead.

He slipped his wand into the sling again. It was done entirely underwater, and he had to simply hope it'd gone in – his hand and both arms were completely numb.

Hollowly, he waded up towards the ford once more – an awkward process, against the current. His heart was about the only thing left in his body that had any feeling, and it was a lead weight.

Without registering much of what was going on, he walked out onto the bank, suddenly confronted with the tremendous weight that his sodden robes were. The merchant stood to one side, looking as though the world had come crashing down on his head, only a loincloth covering his modesty and his soaked clothing piled in the road. The bodyguards were nowhere to be seen. The carter had returned to his family and was leading their cart awkwardly down the track. The merchant's cart could just about be seen, as could the outline of the animal that had pulled it.

"_Whoreson_," the merchant spat. Numbly, Harry turned to face him. "It was only a mark's worth of flesh. You helped me lose _ten pounds _in _silk_!"

After looking for a moment as though he'd strike Harry, the man turned and hobbled away, taking little steps along the riverbank, and Harry simply shivered, feeling small.

…

"Are you sure?" asked Harry, holding up the garment, but the carter's wife didn't answer; she didn't need to. He could just about make out the Hogwarts crest through the crusted grey. Somehow, the river hadn't rinsed the robes so much as made them dirtier.

He'd never felt so humiliated. He'd been sat in front of a huge hearth in the castle hall sipping hot mead in nothing but his smalls for hours, shivering, and only once he'd started to feel the warmth seep into his bones had he realised that he and the merchant – who was doing the exact same thing not ten feet from him – were the laughing stock of the hall. A hall which wasn't short of attractive-if-plain young women, all of whom pointed and laughed behind their hands.

Even if it hadn't been his robe, he considered as he pulled it one-armed over his head, he'd have worn it anyway. He quickly felt for the weight of the coins and the circlet and, finding them to be there, he felt his cheeks grow hot again as the carter's wife saw the action and looked disheartened.

"Never," she continued, turning away. "Never in all my years seen a young lad nearly drown himself over a pony. A cow, mind you, a cow once in Bath, but never a pony…"

Maggie, the carter's daughter, had found a rag in the back of their cart and had sat with him in the castle hall – though the 'hall' was so small inside it made the one at Hogwarts look like the great outdoors – and made him a new sling when his own had dissolved. Harry employed it now, picking up his wand from under his foot and, after glancing around, slipping it into his sling. He wished he hadn't been so entirely surrounded by muggles… after his blatant display of magic in the ford he'd judged it too risky to even attempt a furtive warming charm.

"You'll likely grow feverous," said the carter's wife, turning back to him. "That's if that snapped arm don't kill you sooner."  
Harry hated to be reminded of his arm again. He was reminded every time it shot pain through him when he nudged it anyway. He wished he'd asked Ollivander about fixing it – a healing charm or potion or something. It should have been the first thing he asked, but he'd underestimated just how much a _walk to Scotland _would entail.  
'_The first wizard I meet,_' he considered sullenly. '_Though from how he behaved, he only helped me speak English so that he could question me about my wand. He probably wouldn't have helped much…'_

He'd been seen to by two of the maids of the castle, as had the merchant, and they'd frowned and tutted at him as they inspected his arm and held their hands against his forehead – almost as bad a being giggled at. '_I've survived worse than this_,' he'd not been able to help but think, and had rolled his eyes at their ministrations. He felt guilty about it now… so few people were trying to help him and he'd managed to offend most of them by now. Suspecting the carter's wife of thievery, getting annoyed at the maids… it was exactly the same at home. He'd lost his temper with his friends... Merlin only knew how many times. And still people kept trying to help him. The guilt dug its claws into his stomach and he felt a little queasy.

He was beginning to think he was a sociopath.

The carter came back – he carried two huge, thick slices of bread, piled onto which were what looked suspiciously like chunks of _fresh _meat and slices of apple. He put one down carefullly on Harry's lap.

"Go on, woman, get food for the rest of us," he told his wife briskly, smiling broadly at the merchant. She huffed, and turned.

"Well, you'd best stay," said the carter's wife to Harry suddenly. "You need the warm. Not much of it on the road, yet. We aren't stopping indoors again 'til… well, the monastery at Royston, at least. So you can be staying on here when we're off on the morrow."

She left, accompanied by the little girl and boy. The carter chuckled slightly and turned to Harry.

"She thinks you're impaired," he said simply. "Hmm – 'lunatic heathen barbarian' I think were the words she used. Hmm. So, course, you're welcome with us til York."

Harry smiled slightly. He tucked into his – _thank you Merlin! _– fresh, hot food, a warmth of an entirely different kind filling him from the inside.

"So," said the carter, already having turned back to the merchant. "You'll be needing to buy a few things, I should think."

"I have told you," said the very pale merchant, looking murderous. "I have no money."

"Nonsense," said the carter briskly. "You'll have some gold, or friends to borrow from, influential man like you -"

"And why," the merchant hissed, "would I want to buy anything from _you_?"

"Well – we've got cloth. You'll be needing some new clothes - "

The merchant stood abruptly – fresh meat and fruit sliding off of his bare lap - and Harry wiped his chin of gravy quickly, thinking he might need to fight and not wanting to embarrass himself even more, but the merchant simply glared murderously at the carter and then Harry before stalking away, apparently oblivious to his state of undress.

The carter shook his head as if to say 'Worth a shot', and started gathering the food from the stone floor… _no_, Harry quickly amended himself, becoming more aware of his environment, _it's not a stone floor, it's a forest floor…_

He stared around in confusion, seeing that laid across the floor around the entire room were dried plants. Little red-and-brown pieces of dead foliage covered the _entire _floor, reminding him eerily of Firenze's woodland classroom. He turned back towards the hearth to see, to his horror, that the dead plants on the floor reached right up to the huge fireplace, not twelve inches from the naked flame.

He closed his eyes and forced himself not to panic, reasoning that if there was a risk of them going up in flames, they wouldn't be so close to the fire… but it felt terrifying to find yet _another _thing in this world that was so dangerous, so close to him, and so… so _muggle_. There wasn't a charm these people could do to prevent a spark of embers from burning down the entire castle. How stupid could they possibly be? One spark is all it would take… the image of the church doors swinging open and all the fires of Hell whipping within came unbidden to his mind in furious flashes.

'_I have to take control_,' Harry thought, mourning the feeling of safety that he'd had for a few hours as it ebbed away. '_I can't keep being terrified like this… for all I know, I'm going to start having nightmares about horses, now. Or water – fire, then water. Hell and high water. Making my way through the elements.'_

Feeling queasy, he tried to keep his eyes away from the fire and the dead plants over the floor of the hall, before feeling a rush of self-loathing. Who was he to talk? He considered. Who was he to bemoan the stupidity of muggles, medieval muggles no less, when he'd jumped into a river in his _only pair of shoes and socks_?

Realising that the dried plants on the floor probably served a very sensible purpose, he was just as quickly angry at himself. He hadn't been able to save the horse – he didn't know why it was so important, only that he'd set his mind to it and failed – nor had he managed to save FitzOsbern, who had staggered out of the flames and into the blade of an enemy… he hadn't been able to save Sirius, either. If he couldn't get back to his own time, what would become of them all? He may have led them to their deaths… Sirius dead at the hands of Voldemort, the Death Eaters rounding up Ron, then Hermione, then Neville, then Ginny…

He suddenly felt sick. His stomach groaned loudly and he grunted, doubling over, using every ounce of self-control he had to hold back from vomiting on the dead flowers beneath his feet.

_'Pah,' _he snorted mentally, disgusted with himself. _'Self control, eh? I don't have any control, though, do I? If I could take control of things, I wouldn't even _be _here…'_

Harry closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe calmly, and continue going through the motions of eating. He opened them to find he'd finished the meat, fruit and bread, and his hands were covered in sticky gravy. His stomach still feeling like he'd been hit by a Slug-Vomiting Hex, he gingerly wiped his hands on the leg of his robe.

"I know that feeling," said the carter, holding a hollowed-out animal horn filled with steaming red liquid to him. "Richer foods, see. All's best when the nobles and retinues are away – visiting other holdings or fairs or somesuch – 'cause the cooks still make it all for the knights, and the marshal still got to exercise all the mounts, and the huntsmen… well, it's what they're paid for. After a few days of old stew and such, it can take the stomach a turn to get settled."

"What's this?" asked Harry slowly, taking the drinking-horn with greasy fingers.

"Just a tad of mulled, lad," said the carter, frowning slightly. "I wouldn'a brought you this far just to off you."

Harry flushed with guilt, kicking himself for doing it _again_, wishing that the image of Ollivander passing him a smoking goblet hadn't fleeted through his mind. He brought the cup to his lips, stealthily sniffed it – almost falling over in the process, the smell was so strong – and took a sip.

The onslaught on his senses was incredible. Considering his sole experiences with alcohol consisted of a sip or two of Seamus' Firewhiskey at after-Quidditch parties (geysers of steam and fire from his mouth, much like a pepper-up, but with no real taste) and the weak, pearly beer he'd had in London (simply no real taste), mulled wine was in another league. The _intense_ flavours of berry and fruit and ginger, the warmth and smoothness of it, the heady fumes as it slid down his throat, numbing and warming everything it touched… after only a single sip, he felt as though he was in heaven.

"Aye – can imagine that being just what you'd need, after your swim, eh?" said the carter, smiling slightly. "Don't rush through it, or you'll be snoring by sunset fit to bring the walls down."

Harry, despite wanting to gulp down the rest of the horn's contents, grudgingly handed the carter the drink back, who looked surprised for a moment before he took a sip, and handed it to his wife who had just now returned.

Harry didn't want to get blind drunk so soon after resolving to stop losing control of the situations he landed himself in. He didn't fancy getting blind drunk at all, if he was being honest, but being the idiot that he knew himself to be, he'd likely have downed the whole hornful of delicious wine and passed out. But things were going to change – he'd be an idiot, and reprimanded by Hermione for the rest of their lives, if he didn't take the opportunity that being in this world presented to try to grow up a bit. Try to stop behaving like a child… there was surely too much at stake, now he was getting older. When he'd started Hogwarts it was all an adventure, and none of it seemed quite real – people getting hurt didn't affect him at all. He hadn't considered them a part of _real life_ and was making the most of every minute before he woke up and the dream was over.

Only in second year, he considered, had he realised a little of what the stakes might be – Ginny Weasley, his best friend's little sister, had come very, very close to dying. Even in the Chamber itself, Harry hadn't quite realised what was hung in the balance – he'd been there alone, with Lockhart and Ron trapped behind a cave-in, and he'd fought a _basilisk_, nearly getting himself killed and all! What if Tom Riddle had come back? He, Harry, would be dead, as would Ginny. The basilisk would have got Ron and the fraud, and then gone up the very tunnel they'd slid down and continued reigning havoc in the school… what had happened to Lockhart, when his memory charm had backfired, hadn't properly sunk in until he'd seen him in a permanent ward at St. Mungo's; after three years, the man was 'improving', though he'd probably be dead by the time his memory fully returned.

And his godfather, Harry groaned internally, the very man he'd gone to save two nights ago? Getting him out of the castle, his first experience of time-travel, catching Wormtail, knocking out Snape, it had all been _fun_. If they'd failed… it didn't bear thinking about. Sirius would have been kissed by a Dementor in twenty seconds flat if they'd messed that up even a tiny bit. Lupin could have been killed by Snape. He, Ron and Hermione…

It had all been a game, he knew, the queasiness returning in lieu of the wine's warmth. It seemed very serious at the time, but he hadn't been _taking _any of it seriously. It explained why his friends had been so hesitant to allow him to go to the Ministry… because of his 'saving people thing', as Hermione had so delicately put it. Because he was Harry-the-Stupid-Idiot-Potter, who thought he was a hero, and jumped into things before thinking them through. Just like saving the horse. Just like… just like Cedric.

For all he knew, he could have found Sirius and the Dark Lord, and ended up getting his godfather killed through his own stupidity. He could have led to his friends' torture… he hissed, knowing he had to stop thinking about it, as the thoughts were beginning to cause very real pain and he didn't want _crying_ to add to his list of humiliations in the hall.

_'No more,' _he promised himself, staring at the flames in the hearth. '_No more.'_

…

The rain came that evening, washing over the countryside as the world got darker, and the carters and Harry had found a spot at the back of the hall when the hearth became too crowded. Harry had been unable to stop thinking about Sirius and his friends as he'd laid on the 'rushes' on the floor, a rough and itchy blanket supplied by a castle maid as his cover, thinking back to the time in his third year when his godfather had broken into Gryffindor Tower and everyone had needed to sleep in the hall.

By the time morning was upon them he'd managed to sleep, but didn't know whether to be grateful for warmth and a roof and real covering for the night, irritated at the hard ache that the stone beneath the rushes caused in his back and neck, or more irritated that his abilities as a wizard were all but pointless when he was surrounded by muggles… Merlin, if a cushioning charm wouldn't have gone down a treat.  
Noise filled the hall at an early hour as people began to wake and move to the tables, cold food being brought in by cooks and their young assistants, and Harry had stretched awkwardly as he'd joined the carters nearby. Mrs. Carter was as sour as ever, raising an imperious eyebrow at his lack of fever, but had handed him a wooden bowl of what she'd called 'pottage' all the same.

Despite the discomfort of the hard floor and the promise of a cold, wet and very long journey, Harry felt refreshed. He felt as though he'd woken as a new man – he was resolute, and determined, and knew that no matter what happened he'd be getting to Hogwarts as an adult, not a little boy, and he'd demand help if necessary. He had to get back to his own time and his own problems, so that he could go about taking care of them like a man, not a scared, stupid child. Even as the carters thanked the castellan for his hospitality, he'd stepped forward and shaken the man's hand himself – he wasn't going to allow the carters, with all the problems they had of their own, to simply take care of him. The man hadn't been too blown away by his profusive thanks, but it hadn't dampened Harry's attitude.

He'd even gone to find the merchant – his bodyguards had left him, understandably, as he would be unable to pay them. He'd found himself some clothing, donated generously by some castle denizen or other. He'd scowled at Harry as he approached, turning back to face the still-closed castle gate, but Harry had strode up to him and outright apologised for not being more help. He stumbled over his words a little, garbling something about not realising the the materials were ten pounds worth of silk, but the merchant's expression had softened very slightly nonetheless. Harry had then subtly produced a Galleon from within his robes, pressing it into the man's hand – he had no idea how much a Galleon would be worth, or if it would be able to be used at all with the Gringotts mint on it, but he knew it was solid gold and thought it would be a decent gesture to someone who had apparently lost everything.

The man had been surprised, though not quite delighted, and the gate had opened. He'd nodded once briskly to Harry, not meeting his eye, before striding out, his head held a little higher. The carter had then led his cart up next to Harry and gestured for him to lead on, and Harry had done so, feeling a little better despite himself as he raised the hood of his cloak against the rain and moved onwards. He let the carter and donkey walk faster on the pretense of adjusting his shoes, and when they'd passed and no muggles were in the immediate vicinity he put his wand into each shoe and cast a cushioning charm on the insides; he done the same stealthily to the carter's shoes as they'd eaten, just to give the man a little respite.  
As he moved to catch up with them, he hesitated before putting his wand away, and cast a whispered "_impervius!" _on the cart's covering. He could survive getting a little wet with the carters, but wasn't sure if the mysterious contents of the cart would be damaged at all by rain. He decided it was better safe than sorry. He was a new man, this day, and thought he'd start applying himself a little more… even if a lot of it the carters wouldn't notice.

…

"Aye, what a summer we're leaning toward," the carter was saying. "This _bloody_ chill."

They'd walked for a good four hours since leaving Hertford, without stopping once. Harry's resolution hadn't faltered, but nor was he particularly paying attention to the carter; the ache in his legs had returned in earnest, his feet – still bearing his shoes but without socks or a freshly applied cushioning charm – were blistering badly, and he was for the second time in as many days soaked to the bone. Harry didn't consider himself unfit – especially not when compared to Ron or Hermione – but he wasn't used to endless, ceaseless walking through forest and valley.

When he saw the carter in the same position, however, he made himself stop his mental grumbling. The man went through this every day of his life. The carter himself had no such reservations about grumbling, though, and went on about the weather and all the seasons he'd seen in his life, but was now interrupted by the donkey, which brayed loudly and shook its head.

"Ah," said the carter, staring up at the grey sky. "Looks like it's about noon, as our old friend here has reminded me – time for a stop, I think, eh?"

They continued on, Harry looking just as hard as the others for an appropriate – preferably undercover – place to get away from the road for lunch, before the carter's wife pointed at a copse of trees a little way down. The carter agreed, joined silently by Harry, and they headed towards it, working together to get the cart over the small verge before they could settle down around a fire.

As the carter saw to the donkey, his wife tried to get a fire going and the two children started playing chase around the copse, Harry stared around the temporary campsite, searching for something to do that could help. The copse, sided by the road, dropped away on the other into a steep hill that led down to a stream.

Misunderstanding his look, the carter said, "You can go down there, lad," pointing down the slope.

Harry was going to correct the carter's interpretation of his search, before an idea popped into his head and he nodded, beginning to make his way awkwardly down towards the stream. When he reached it, a few slips for the worse, he lowered his hood and retrieved his wand from his sling, considering what he was about to attempt.

Gritting his teeth, he made his way to the edge of the water cautiously, not desiring a repeat of the previous day, before staring avidly beneath the surface, looking for any telltale glimmers. He heard the carter's wife raise her voice up the hill and shut her out of his head, trying to concentrate on finding fish, not the stern woman shouting at her children.

Not seeing anything, he pursed his lips, raising his wand at the surface of the water, and decided to simply try it.

"_Accio Fish!_" he said forcefully and, to his surprise, the surface of the water splashed as a small, silvery fish flew up into his face.

Surprised at the suddenness with which he'd managed it, he grasped instinctively at it, his seeker reflexes paying off as his fingers closed around the slimy body – before losing his grip. The fish fell, and Harry tried to catch it as it went, at the same time trying to not drop the wand that was in the same hand, and he ended up almost overbalancing into the stream for his efforts as the fish _sploshed_ under the surface again.

Breathing hard, slightly embarrassed, he considered, before searching the ground around him for… _there_, a long stick. With a slice of his wand and a whispered "_Diffindo_" he cut one end into a point and tested the weight of it in his hand. Guessing that it probably wouldn't break, he transferred his wand to his stiff left hand, poking out of the sling, and used his right to maneuvre it in the motions necessary for a levitation charm.

"_Wingardium Leviosa_," he whispered with a forced swish and flick, but was concentrating too much on making sure his right hand was on the wand and his left wasn't hurting too much. He tried again, with no result, before clasping the makeshift spear between his knees and concentrating hard once again.

It worked – he aimed slightly at a silvery flash beneath the surface and, enunciating clearly, managed to levitate the fish out of the water. He got it up to waist height, frightened to lose concentration and drop it, and slowly lifted the sharpened stick with his right hand. He took aim – and the carter's wife shouted unintelligibly yet again. He clenched his jaw in annoyance, figuring she was probably calling him for food, and determined that he wasn't going back without a contribution to the meal. It was the least he could, and would, do.

With a stabbing motion, he successfully speared the still-struggling fish on his stick. He felt a thrill of exhilaration and pointed the wand back at the surface of the water, repeating the procedure yet again. With a swish, flick and a stab, a second fish was speared, and he shook the stick to shuffle them down towards his hand to make room for more.

After four fish, he had decided to get one more – one for each of them, he thought was fair – but the weight of the stick was too much. The levitating fish, flapping around in mid-air, was barely kept aloft by his shaking left hand and he couldn't get the two lined up. He tried twice more before giving up, allowing the spell to drop in frustration, and the still-alive fish _sploshed _to freedom, disappearing beneath the surface. After considering for a moment and deciding it didn't matter, Harry slid his wand back into his sleeve and, feeling immensely proud of himself, turned to march back up the hill with his prize held before him.

He knew they'd get the shock of their lives – they thought he'd been off to relieve himself, and instead returned with fresh food. He knew they wouldn't have been able to catch fish themselves. He had barely managed it after all.

He strode into the copse of trees, unable to keep the smile from his face, before stopping dead in his tracks. He dropped the spear of fish and moved forwards.

In the centre of the copse of trees, the carter's wife knelt over a bundle of rags, weeping. The carter himself had a bloodied face and broken nose, and was leaning against a trunk on the edge of consciousness. The fire hadn't been lit. The little boy stood uncertainly by the road. The donkey and the cart were missing.

"What happened?" asked Harry, but his voice seemed to belong to a stranger. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he took in the scene. "What _happened_?"

He was ignored – the carter had fallen fully unconscious. The carter's wife was still weeping. Harry moved towards her, not daring to believe that –

He turned away, forcing down vomit, as he recognised the bundle of rags as Maggie. Eyes open, staring into the drizzling sky, face a mess of matted blood and hair…

Before he knew what was happening, he _was _vomiting, throwing up the pottage breakfast he'd had against a tree, his brain struggling to piece together what was going on – what had happened to the carter's family in the few minutes he was down, catching fish for them to eat, what had happened to hurt this kind man and – and _kill_ his daughter…

Unbidden, almost reluctantly, his mind began to work out what had happened. He forced himself not to think about the little girl, to concentrate on… on whoever had done this thing. To whoever had murdered an innocent little girl.

He didn't even realise what he was doing as he drew his wand, moving towards the little boy by the road. The sound of weeping behind him fell quieter and the boy – the boy whose name he didn't even know – stared up at him, tears streaming down his cheeks, looking completely lost.

"Were we robbed?" asked Harry, his voice hoarse.

The little boy stared at him. He looked shellshocked.

"Are you hurt?" asked Harry, more forcefully than he'd intended, because the boy jumped slightly like a startled rabbit, shaking his head. "Which way did they go?" asked Harry, unable to keep the steel from his voice.

The boy pointed, chin trembling, at some woodland nearby a little further down the road.

Without another word, Harry walked towards it. His feet hitting the earth pounded through his head, keeping time with his heart. He wished vaguely that he could have thought of something else to say to the boy, but dismissed it – he didn't know what he was doing. He moved into the trees, surprised at how quickly he'd reached them, and kept going forwards, only knowing that he had to do _something_. He had to do something for them – for that little girl who'd made him a sling and smiled coyly at him.

He was crying too, and the hot tears streaked down the cold mosture on his face. He stopped himself. Now was not the time. The woodland passed in a green and brown blur around him as the world got darker. He thought he could hear music from somewhere, but ignored it.

He kept moving.

Then he was upon tracks – wheel tracks, fresh, and footprints and hoof-prints. He stared behind him, into the lighter forest, and then turned around to face the darker. The shadows loomed and threatened, but he moved onwards. As he got deeper, following the tracks absent-mindedly, he realised he was walking, but everything was moving at the pace of a run around him, low-hanging branches whipping past his head, and it was getting harder to see, and he knew he was close and kept moving.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears in a shuddering tune, like the reverberations of a church bell after being rung, and in his mind's eye all he could see was Maggie's smile, shattered and bloodied, and the carter's ruined nose, and the shellshocked boy, and the weeping, wailing grief of a mother, and suddenly –

The donkey and cart. And two men who were singing, their voices cutting across the air.

They were in a clearing, and the bandits were leading the donkey at a trot, and all of the sound cleared from his mind and he could see again, and hear the two of them as they sang a jovial song.  
_"Impedimenta!_ " Harry muttered, his wand before him and his aim true from a hundred yards away, but such was the force of the spell that the cart's wheel tilted off entirely and the bed collapsed, and the donkey stopped in its tracks. He swore softly – he kept telling himself that he wasn't there for revenge, but rather to retrieve the cart… even of the two were _singing_…  
The bandits hadn't seen Harry yet – the larger began to flail at the stationary beast, trying to get it moving once more as the other bent down and hefted the wheel, trying to get it back on the axle... their song had been abruptly silenced.

Harry swept forwards, his fury giving everything a shining clarity, showing him colours that weren't there before even as he tried to think of what he was going to attempt… the green in the trees, the blue beyond the grey cloud, the red on a dense, hairy patch on the end of the man's club…

It had blood on it. The carter's blood. Maggie's blood.

"Stop," intoned Harry, his voice carrying despite the shuddering pulse in his throat. "_Stop. _Give back the cart."

The two men turned to him, faces devoid of expression and eyes vacant, though the smaller looked dimly surprised to have been followed into the forest. Harry knew in that moment that they would fight him for the cart. That they'd try to kill him, just as they did Maggie. Something very cold and very dark hardened inside him as he accepted this and the grip on his wand tightened.

The men did not talk – there was no need, as all there knew what was to come – and the larger of the two, the one bearing the ugly club, started walking towards him to meet him in the centre of the clearing. Harry took a deep breath and decided how he'd deal with the men.

When he broke into a run from twenty yards away, Harry tried his first rapidly-thought-out strategy – frighten him.  
"_Relashio!_" he shouted, and with a bang and flash, a plume of fiery-gold sparks burst from the end of his wand, casting a mock-daylight on the ground beneath them.  
To his surprise however, the man simply kept running, and was only a few steps away when he raised his club and swung.  
Using the luminance of the sparks as cover, Harry dove to the right, landing on his side with a grunt and the jolt on his broken arm sending a spasm of pain through him. He rolled awkwardly onto his back to see the huge man wave his hand through the residual smoke, trying to clear black spots from his eyes, before clocking Harry and hefting his club.  
He didn't know why the sparks hadn't had an effect. Time for strategy two, Harry decided; give him a bigger problem to deal with. He summoned up his strength in the blink of an eye, a hot anger swelling his heart and clouding his mind.

"_Incendio!_" he grunted, the heat bursting from his very soul and telling him, as soon as he'd cast it, that the spell was _far_ too powerful…

In mid stride, the man's head erupted into a ball of flames – the club fell at his feet and his hands went up, and his scream tore the air as he spat flames from crisping lips. He couldn't stop himself and he staggered forwards in a pitiful dive, coming to a halt with a thud before Harry's feet and rolling and writhing in agony.

A thrill ran through Harry – a horror that prickled across his skin – and he felt himself tremble as it threatened to overcome him. He'd only meant to set the man's shirt on fire… to distract him…

But the second man was running at Harry, a knife raised, and the boy almost didn't see him before he flicked his wand, whispering "_Diffindo!_" but scared, suddenly, to push too much power into it. It hit the man's abdomen, but didn't appear to have cut through to the skin – that or the man did not feel it. Harry hefted himself to his feet ungracefully and tried to aim at the man before he reached him…

Too late. The smaller man was upon him, dagger hissing through the air as he tried to kill Harry with wide, arcing strokes, eyes wild, and Harry felt the same instinct that had helped him dodge his cousin and his friends take over. He stayed just out of the man's reach, fighting to aim his wand and not risk losing his working arm. All quickly thought-out strategy went out of the window as he simply tried to survive.

He saw an opening, hot blood coursing through him, and aimed at the man's foot as he grunted, "_Locomotor Mortis!_"

The man's sandals snapped together with an audible crack as his legs locked, and he screamed, but he launched himself at Harry nonetheless, the dagger splicing into his shoulder and the weight of the man's body throwing him backwards. As Harry staggered, his foot slipped on the larger man's club and he fell.

His head hit the ground again, hard, and his vision went white for a moment as his broken arm jolted and sent pain shooting through his entire body… he was certain the arm would never heal, at this rate.

Biting throught it, the adrenaline and sheer _rage _at this muggle allowing him to carry on, he scrambled backwards and, from a sitting position, pointed his wand at the fallen man, who was trying to cut the very skin of his bare legs apart from where they were locked, screaming all the while.

_'He's just a muggle, he doesn't know what's happening,_' a small voice in Harry's head whispered, but with the pain in his broken arm, still in Maggie's sling, the small voice was silenced by a louder presence, screeching, '_He killed that little girl!_'

He brought his wand down in an arc and almost screamed "_Diffindo!_" as he aimed for the man's neck, and his aim was true – the spell cut into the side and back of the man's neck and the knife was dropped, his hands going to his neck with a scream and a thrash – _but it wasn't enough._

"_Reducto!_" Harry shouted, before he even knew that he was doing it, and the wand still pointed at back of the man's neck as he felt the rush of magic flow through him and righteous fury exploded from the tip.

An eruption of blood and gore slapped Harry full in the face, knocking him onto his back. There had been no sound, no explosive bang, merely a wet squelch and the sharp stop of the man's screams as the reductor curse hit the neck with a flash of red. The sound of liquified bodyparts then came as they thudded into the grass around them.

Choking, spitting out skin and hair, he scrambled to his feet and waved his wand blindly, listening for further threats or the sounds of feet as he tried to wipe his eyes on his shoulder… but there was no threat. Everything he saw through a sheen of red; the mess of the once-human carcass in front of him, the still-petrified donkey… the grip on his wand slick, his stomach heaving, he turned to scan for the larger man. He'd managed to crawl a few yards, somehow, but his upper body was almost entirely aflame, blazing merrily, black smoke pouring off the still mass and billowing in the wind and drizzle. The fire crackled and popped hissed in a sickening way as it made its way through its fuel, but man himself was silent and still; now, blissfully, dead.

And then Harry was in the church once more. The thick, acrid smell of burning flesh caught in his throat. A waft of the black smoke caught his eyes, already stinging from the blood in them, and they were suddenly watering uncontrollably as he fought to free his crimson vision from the depths of the blazing church.

Still not registering all of what had just transpired, Harry dropped his wand and bent to pick it up from the blood-soaked grass at his feet, and _still _he wasn't quite sure what he'd done. He could vaguely hear the buzzing and thudding behind his ears and nausea threatened to overcome him once more. He made his way to the stationary donkey and met its eye. It was stuck on him, unfalteringly, and gazing right into his own, the frozen beast seeming to stare in terror right into Harry's soul.

At once, everything was very still, and the heat of the fight was ebbing away but the cold, hard core to his chest remained, and Harry could do nothing but stare back.

…

It was a long time before Harry emerged from the forest, leading the donkey at reign.

With careful deliberation, he drew the animal and cart to just beyond the copse of trees and tied the rope that bridled the donkey around the nearest trunk. The family, what remained of it, were huddled together. The carter had wrapped his daughter in her rags and she lay at their knees, where the three hugged and wept in silence. Harry could not see their faces. He did not want them to see the blood on him, the gore which he could taste on his lips, and he didn't have the strength of mind to _scourgify_ himself. He stood, watching them as evening loomed, before turning away. Reaching into his robes he pulled out two golden Galleons and put them on the bed of the cart.

He really didn't know what else he could do.

After pausing to consider, he stepped away and moved to the road, limping slightly as the pain in his blisters came thundering back, and walked away.

Indeed, not all of Harry emerged from the forest that day, leading the donkey at reign.

…

_Author's Notes:_

_This chapter was approximately 10,431 words. Many thanks for reading._


	4. Of Scrutiny and the Vault

_Pre-Chapter Garble: Endless thanks to all those reviewers who have lent their time to the story. It's got pretty mixed write-ups so far, and I can understand why - it's going to be a long one, and I'm precious over this beast like no other, getting very OCD/perfectionist over various things. Anything you can point out that I've obviously missed is extremely helpful and goes toward making a better story in the end of it - I'm not a pro writer, as is obvious, and need all the nudges I can get. Even more of my thanks for being patient while I undergo this process - I'm going to do as much as I can to not let this end up abandoned, no matter how long the wait between chapters. When the new year's workload eases up I'll have more time to write._

_A little note about the _Assassin's Creed _element to the story - it's titled as it is because of how important the AC arc will be to the story in the end, but it will not be an AC crossover for a very long time yet. I'm trying to make this novel-length and also maintain an element of realism in it, and while the AC parts will be crucial (enough to name the story after it) we won't be seeing it for a while. When you see how many words it's going to take to even reach Hogwarts, you'll see what I mean. Hopefully you can keep up with it until then, if that's specifically what you're reading for, but I'm writing an adventure and in the next couple of chapters it's going to get very exciting - forget about the AC bits for now and when it happens, it'll be there before you even realise it became an important part of the story - Altair isn't just going to jump out of the woodwork in the English countryside, though he will be a major character. For those who aren't familiar with AC at all, keep calm and carry on. These early bits are setting up future characters, subplots and arcs (and most importantly, a believable, tough main character) that will come into it throughout, and _Assassin's Creed _will be one of many adventures. So anyway, enough of the AN rambling - please enjoy the 18th draft of Chapter 4, and I'll try to not keep you waiting so long for the next one._

_Oh, and this is updated on Patronus Charm before it's updated here._

_Peace, _

_G.L._

_..._

**Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed**

Chapter Four: Of Scrutiny and the Vault

The sunrise glared through the trees and he glared back.

Finding that he was engrossed, Harry tore himself away and staggered on. Through the prior day and night he'd walked, ignoring his pangs of hunger, the throbs of his arm and the aches of his blistered feet, punishing himself and refusing to stop.

He knew he was being stupid – he knew he needed sleep and food, that he was doing himself more harm than good - but as his brain caught up fully with what he'd done he simply refused to indulge himself. The thought of doing anything other than just reaching Scotland and getting out of this cursed place made him nauseous.

Harry wondered vaguely as he stomped through the undergrowth if he'd done the right thing by leaving the family.

But it was too late, anyway. Far too late for him.

…

He wasn't sure how long he'd walked for, but he'd come onto a road again somewhere. Other people were on it… he didn't remember faces, but there'd been other people there as he burst from the undergrowth and staggered up the track. Mere shapes in the shadow, now, as the world grew darker.

He debated whether or not he should keep going through the roots and bramble - facing people felt as though it should be avoided - but the scratches and cuts on his legs and thorns in his shoes convinced him to stick to the road. He decided, as he stumbled over yet another protruding root in the misshapen dirt track, that when he was back in his own time, in the 20th century, he'd probably find the nearest muggle road, get to his hands and knees, and _kiss _the smooth asphault.

The pain in his stomach was causing him to black out periodically, but he didn't stop walking. It was getting dark – a lot harder to see through the thick shadows – and fires sprang up around him as people started to get ready for the night on the sides of the road.

He cursed his own resolution to walk until he couldn't, knowing that he was reaching that point fairly quickly. He raised his wand and summoned a bird. A woodpigeon soared into his hand, looking as though it was flying backwards, and he stunned it with a muttered "_Stupefy_'" before pocketing the wand and staggering over to the quietest looking camp.

A man looked up at him as he approached, and Harry held out the bird as an offering.

"Can I share your fire?" he croaked.

The man nodded, saying nothing but eyeing him warily, and Harry collapsed next to the glowing pit. The stranger – muscular and barrel-chested - leant over and plucked the bird from his grasp, and set about de-feathering it.

Harry pulled off his torn shoes and a little blood that had welled at the bottom of them poured out. His feet were a mess. The soles were in shreds. He tossed the ruined shoes aside and pulled the thorns from his feet, wincing at the pain his blisters caused him but bearing it. He dry-retched when he burst one, grinding his teeth together. He wished he'd thought to _Scourgify _his feet before approaching the muggle and his fingers itched for his wand.

Swaying, he started slightly when the man held a wing out to him… how long had he been sitting there? In no time at all, it seemed, the bird was cooked. Harry's blood-smeared fingers almost snatched it from the man and he sank his teeth into it, burning his mouth on the bird's meagre meat and relishing the pain.

Then he remembered that he hadn't killed the bird – he'd merely stunned it. It had still been alive when it was put on the fire.

Harry felt himself begin to cry, and he fought – Merlin, did he fight it – but the tears came anyway as his mouth, mechanically, kept chewing.

…

He saw the men, heard them singing, and saw the burning head, the flesh blackening on the skull, and the cut in the man's neck exposing his vertebrae…

Then Harry opened his eyes to find nothing but darkness. He still could hear singing, though… he was inside. Nearby was an echoing, achingly vast cavern, a choir in full voice shaking it to the foundation.

He sat up and groaned, his joints protesting the movement, and found himself undressed and in a bed. He could scarcely believe that he was really hearing the thunderous choir, but he couldn't stop to think – it was hard to concentrate on anything but the singing. He found he didn't know if he could move any further and worried for a brief, foolish moment that he might have died.

Laying back, the nearby voices clanging through his skull, he tried to remember what had happened… he'd been eating the bird's wing, burning his mouth on it – yes, he could still detect a metallic coarseness on the top of his dry tongue – and had begun to cry. He'd walked for days - what had felt like weeks – and must have collapsed, the tears finally sapping the last of his strength. But what had he been crying about?

_'It doesn't matter,' _he instructed himself blithely. '_No more crying.'_

The bed was straw and something softer – wool? – and it scratched against his bare back. It occurred to Harry that he should locate his robes and possessions, but it was still too dark to make anything around him out and he didn't think he'd be able to walk. His nose felt blocked; in the wilderness, everything around him had smelt crisp and fresh, but the air here seemed muskier than he could remember. There was something heavy on it too – something thick and sweet and smoky that caught in the back of his throat.

Harry realised with surprise that his arm wasn't hurting. Even his feet felt a little better, and it was mainly his joints that ached. He rubbed his eyes, vaguely wishing he still had his glasses, before turning his head laboriously to where he imagined the door to be.

Nothing. Somewhere out there, the singing had come to an end. A noiseless void hung in its wake.

He looked back up at the ceiling, an immeasurable distance from his face, and before lapsing into blissful oblivion once more he searched his sling for his wand, which he found to be missing.

…

"You're starved, lad."

His eyes flicked up to the old man leaning over him. The wizened old monk was holding a wooden spoon with thick, sticky pottage on it, trying to coax Harry into eating it.

"I've eaten more than half the bowl," said Harry, hating how petulant he sounded. He opened his mouth anyway, feeling like a six year old Dudley under a fawning Petunia, and scraped the thick, oaky mixture off of the spoon with his teeth. '_I've killed men,_' he thought but didn't dare say, as though saying it might make it somehow truer.

As Harry showed his teeth, the old man bared his own, eyes on Harry's mouth as he chewed. He sported a grimace full of black teeth and gaps and his breath smelt like milk too long left in the sun, and Harry had to look away, struggling as it was to keep from throwing up the food.

"Where am I?" Harry asked the wall after forcing it down.

"St. Martin's," the monk replied, digging into the bowl for another spoonful. "Near Bedford."

"How far is that from – from Hertford?" asked Harry, his stomach aching. When the old man looked puzzled, he instead asked, "Or from London?"

"London? Oh – p'raps twenty leagues? A little less?"

"_Twenty?_" Harry gasped, sitting up sharply and making the old man jump back. "Hertford was twenty leagues from London! The _carter_ said so! How could I have – unless I went _west _instead of north? The carter told me -"

"Hold, now," the old man snapped, his kindly visage melting. "Enough questions! I'm trying to help you, boy. Bedford – well, I don't know about Hertford, but Bedford's due north of London, or so says Brother Sander. He's our Sacrist. Now listen; I don't care who or what you're running from, but you'll be going no further with your feet in that state. Nor until I can find you some proper cobbles. It'd be ungodly. Whatever it is you're trying to get away from, where you'll end up like this'll be worse! You're in a house of God here, and whatever's after you can't hurt you."

Eyes clamped shut and swallowing hard, Harry breathed to calm himself down before nodding, the comments about him 'running' hitting home. He had decided in that moment to get himself a map, no matter the cost, and to never again end up helpless in a bed under the compulsive care of male, medieval, muggle Madam Pomfreys.

At the thought of the stern Healer and the soft-spot she seemed to have for him, he felt a longing for his school. Injuries here could not be fixed with the wave of a wand and a good night's sleep... embracing the warmth that even the dreaded hospital wing inspired in him, Harry held on to the feelings that Hogwarts stirred, determined to channel it - to use it as fuel - and to not forget where he was heading - nor to forget that he'd need his health to make it there in easily mended pieces.

"Sorry," he said shortly.

"S'no problem," the old monk said blithely, digging into the bowl again as though he'd not just lost his temper. "Dealt with men after a battle – bloodier than this, but fussier too, to no end. It's pride, hear?" He sniffed, pursing his lips. "You're at St. Martin's-'pon-Ouse now, and old Patrick's is looking after your wellbeing, and St. Martin was one of the main saintly examples of charity! He cut his cloak to share with a clotheless man, a beggar, going naked himself. Saying no to our help in the state you are – s'just nonsense. I'll speak to Brother Sander. He's even _been_ to London, which is more'n most of us here, so he'll be able to say if I got it wrong, or if this 'carter' did. But you'll be doing the grand sum of resting while I do, hear?"

Harry nodded, and this time accepted the spoonful of cold pottage without protest. He'd been stupid, trying to torture himself, and it would help nobody if he died in this bleak place.

"I had a stick of wood," began Harry after swallowing. "In my pocket, or in my sling - it's quite important."

"A stick of wood?" asked Patrick with a puzzled frown. "That's enough for now, I think. Plenty enough. I'll be off to mass - the Deacon's taking the services today, and'll need to know you're awake! We'll make you another splint in no time. You rest up."

…

He was confined to the bed for an entire day, unable to move even if the old monk – Brother Patrick – had let him.

The old man had spent the day between services, of which there seemed to be an awful lot, feeding Harry, cleaning him up with a rag and a pail of salt water – he had still been covered in dried blood when they'd brought him in, and had weakly defended the mess with "I was attacked," hating himself for it afterwards – and telling him about the monastery and surrounding diocese. His demeanour was slightly stiffer around Harry than it had been before, it that were possible, and the opportunities to ask his own questions became rarer.

Resigned, Harry had let most of Patrick's monologue wash over him. He had to leave as soon as he was able, and as grateful as he was to Brother Patrick for helping him, the sooner he reached Hogwarts, the sooner he could be home. He'd managed to ask the crooked monk about his wand again - his 'stick of wood' - but Patrick had simply assumed he was talking about a splint for his arm, and produced a new one that he'd had a 'novice' fashion him.

In spite of his growing frustration, Harry's feet were on the mend - thanks mainly to whatever salve Patrick had been applying - but his wounded shoulder ached profusely, he was sure his arm would never now set properly, and he still had the cold, hard weight in his abdomen which he'd first thought was hunger and now knew was guilt.

He was feeling sorrier for himself than he cared to admit. The guilt was slowly consuming him from the inside, bubbling away with a pang and making his fingertips itch whenever his mind cast back to the forest clearing. He told himself he was annoyed more than anything else – he'd delayed his own departure from this place through his own stupidity - but the worse he felt both physically and mentally, the angrier with himself he became.

He also felt, deep down, that he should be _more_ repentant for what hadhappened in the clearing…

That evening, however, Patrick told him that if he absolutely must, he'd be able to try and walk. Harry had expressed concern that his feet might not be properly healed, but Patrick had waved away the fretting with a frown as he'd handed him his robe, telling him that the callouses on his feet were mostly healed and that feet, after all, are tougher than anywhere else on the body.

Before he was going anywhere, though, he was determined to find out what they'd done with his belongings. Checking his pockets as he slipped the robe on, he found them to be empty.

"Patrick," he said, setting aside a wooden mug and wiping his chin. "When I came in -"

"_Brother _Patrick, lad," the old man admonished, busying himself with rinsing the bloody rag in the pail.

"Sorry," said Harry, reminded uncomfortably of Dumbledore correcting him when he talked about Snape. "Brother Patrick, when I came in, I had things in the pockets of my robe – my clothes – some coins, a crumpled bit of gold and – and a wooden stick, about a foot long - _not _a splint for my arm, but a different stick."

"No, lad," the old man shook his head, still not looking at him and suddenly colder. "Nothing on you but clothes and whatnot, and those strange ruined shoes."

Harry said nothing. The way the man wouldn't look at him while saying it led him to believe that there was probably more to it than he was letting on. Either way, though, it looked like he'd been robbed. He shuffled his way to the side of the bed and hung his legs over, not yet touching the soles of his feet to the rough wooden floor.

"The stick is the most important thing," said Harry. "I have to have it."

"What's so important about this stick, then?" said Patrick, looking at him finally through narrowed eyes.

'_I'm a wizard,' _Harry thought, but didn't dare say, having a sneaking suspicion that it might be something exactly like what this old monk wanted to hear.

"It's – uh - it holds a lot of… value. To me, personally. It – it was a family heirloom," he managed, Ron's brother's old wand and how he'd acted about that springing to mind. "It was given to me by my brother. It's his, really – I'm just borrowing it. And he's going to really want to have it back. It's important to him. And to me."

He gulped, hoping he didn't sound as much like he was lying as he thought he did.

"What does it do?" asked the monk quietly.

"Nothing," said Harry quickly, thinking '_Oh Merlin, help me, he knows._'

"But it's important. To your… brother."

Reminded forcefully of Ollivander when he'd suddenly become very sinister, Harry was fast deciding that he didn't much care for this monk at all.

"Yes. And to me – it belongs to our family, and it's an important family… tradition."

_'He knows, for God's sake,' _the voice in his head was screeching. _'He knows what it is and what it does…'_

Do they burn wizards? Harry wondered, before deciding he'd probably be happier not knowing. He met the old man's eyes with what he hoped was an honest expression.

"Well," said Patrick, finally breaking off his stare. "I'm sorry to say that it seems the man who brought you in took 'em off you. A big man, I'm told, big strong man, carried you all the way here. Robbed you. He did confess his sins while he was here, confessed to Brother Duncan, but he's gone now, well on his way, hear?"

"There must be something you can do," said Harry desperately, the sinking feeling returning in full force. "It's all I have…"

"You have God," said the old man reverently, but if the statement was meant to reassure Harry it failed in the attempt. "And St. Martin."

Only a few minutes later the old man excused himself, muttering something about 'vespers' and, after collecting a few pots of salve, shuffling out.

Harry, figuring that any attempt he made at walking he'd have to manage alone, placed the soles of his feet gingerly on the floor – to his surprise, the monk hadn't lied; there was no pain. He lifted a foot up onto the opposite knee and stared at the bottom of it. It was still a mess, but healing quickly… everything about this place was becoming more and more confusing to Harry, as he had no idea how they'd have possibly healed his shredded feet without the assistance of magic…

Unless he'd been there, in that bed, for a lot longer than he'd thought. It had felt like mere days…

He put both feet on the floor again and his hands on the bed beside him, readying himself, before heaving and pitching forwards, trying to get them to take the weight. He managed it, but only barely; his legs and joints still ached from the near-endless walk he'd put himself through.

As he took a few tender steps away from the cot towards the sandals supplied for him, his sole working arm extended to keep himself from overbalancing, Harry wondered what on earth he was going to do about getting his wand back. He couldn't remember what the man had even looked like who was supposed to have taken it, as everything to do with that fire and the bird was a haze - he'd barely been conscious by that point. He couldn't get to Hogwarts without a wand… of this he had no fantasy. He would be completely unable to survive in this world without it. Merlin knew, he'd barely survived as it was.

…

St. Martin's-upon-Ouse was tiny. In the centre sat a squat chapel, surrounded by a quarter-ring of outbuildings, with a little track to a mill working the crystalline river about a mile downstream. All around it on the monastery side of the river was farmland, with distant, brown-clad figures working on it right up to the forest's edge.

The evening was cold but clear and Harry sucked in the fresher air gratefully, chest heaving as he leant against the chapel wall, almost irrationally irritated by how small the church was… it'd sounded louder when it was filled with singing monks.

After being confined to the bed for a day, swamped in incense and snipes from the 'charitable' Brother Patrick, Harry was glad to be able to walk even this far away from it. It was perfect, almost, though he had to admit that the monks were ruining it: Since they'd emerged from 'vespers', which seemed to be some sort of evening prayer ceremony, any of the fifty-or-so monks who hadn't gone to do a little more in the fields before sunset had taken it upon themselves to stare at Harry. One or two small groups hung in the shadowy doorways of the outbuildings, casting furtive glances at him periodically, and others simply stared openly as they walked past, as though at a particularly curious insect on the wall of their church.

It was making him uncomfortable, and the guilt within him was threatening to rear its ugly head as a small, foolish part of him incessantly hinted that they knew what he'd done in the clearing of the woods. He squashed it repeatedly, knowing that the sheltered men in this forgotten corner of the world were likely just unused to strangers… but it annoyed him nonetheless, the discomfort, reinforcing the feeling of being a _stranger_, of being someone _different_, and finding yet another beautiful part of the world that would forever be forbidden to him.

Shaking his head clear of the reverie, Harry pushed himself away from the wall and once more bore the weight on his wounded feet. He had no time to reminisce, and the serenity of the location after the chaos of past days was lulling him into complacency. As he shuffled over to the infirmary's door, bracing himself for the onslaught of sickly incense, he considered that in reality his situation here was very, very serious.

He had no wand. It had been stolen. By this stranger in the woods, the stranger who'd so deftly de-feathered the woodpigeon and confessed to 'Brother Duncan', or whoever else it could have been. The very suspicious Patrick, for one. Any of the other monks. For all he knew he could have dropped it in the woods as he was carried to St. Martin's, on a road somewhere, since trodden in half by a horse… Harry winced, feeling a pain far more potent than any he'd felt for his own broken arm at the thought of losing his wand.

And no money, to top it off. No Circlet either, which he grudgingly accepted was probably the most important tool for getting home, but still the wand frustrated him the most, for the simple fact that it was his _wand_. One does not simply _lose_ their wand.

He didn't even entertain the notion of trying to continue without it. Money he could technically survive without, and the Circlet of Ashima he could describe from memory, so distinctive was it in its spindly, lacewing design and annoying trait of _time travel_, but his wand… it was, simply put, what made him a wizard. Without being a wizard, he'd not make it half-way to Scotland and had barely made it this far – as a muggle, though Harry hated himself for the prejudice, in this era he'd be killed. He was not big or strong or selling something. He didn't have the kill-or-be-killed attitude that mankind seemed to thrive on in this time, as wizards didn't need to. They didn't have to be ugly and violent – of course some were anyway, but that was their own choice, and those men and women were by and large Harry's sworn enemies.

No, he concluded as he used the wall as a crutch, he didn't have the brawn or the ferocity to get to Hogwarts as a muggle… though he snorted slightly at the thought of Dudley being right at home here, if he wasn't crying for his mother and puddling in a heap.

The smile deserted him as he reached his room: a monk sat on Patrick's cot, an impassive look on his face that dissolved into shock at the sight of Harry, and a spark of recognition lit up Harry's mind.

"Good God," the monk said in a strange, thick accent.

"You – you were in the church," said Harry, frowning. "In London."

The monk said nothing. His dark eyes beheld Harry's face for a long moment, and he visibly swallowed before standing – he towered over Harry.

"As were you," the man said quietly. "I am Brother Sander."

But Harry's mind was past this fact, and he turned and swung the thick oak door closed before facing the monk again.

"You know I'm a wizard!" hissed Harry, eyes wide. "You know I am, you already saw me do magic!"

Sander looked as though he'd been forced to swallow something unpleasant. He cleared his throat, further enforcing the illusion, before turning on his heel: Harry thought the man was going to walk past him and out of the door, but instead Sander began to pace.

"I have to ask you some questions," said Sander uncertainly. "It's important that you answer them."

Harry didn't care.

"My wand's been stolen," he said anxiously. "It could have been one of the monks."

Sander abruptly stopped pacing, turning to Harry and meeting his eye, saying, "Monksdo not _steal_!"

"Well – I don't know who it was," said Harry, feeling his cheeks grow hot. "But it's been stolen. I have to get it back… can you help me? You already know I'm a wizard - "

"Yes," Sander said quietly. "I do. But you will answer my questions."

'_Fine,' _Harry thought, impatient. _'If it means he might help me then fine.'_

At his silence, Sander asked, "Where are you travelling to?"

"Scotland."

Sander nodded.

"You told Brother Patrick as much, yes," said the monk, as though it was of profound significance.

"Then why did you ask me?" growled Harry, growing annoyed. "Why would I tell him and you something different?

"Because you already lied to Brother Patrick, and told him the wand was taken from someone else… and as you said," Sander sneered, "_I_ know you're a – a…"

_'Wizard,' _thought Harry, shaking his head. _'He's like some sort of pious, medieval Dursley.'_

"I'm not dangerous or anything," said Harry with a scowl. "I just want to go home."

"Well, yes, speaking of the threat you pose," said Sander, "why were you covered in blood?"

"I was attacked," said Harry, a little more comfortable with the idea now. "By bandits."

"So all of the blood upon you was your own?" asked Sander, an eyebrow arched.

"No," said Harry, and the spirited defiance fled. "No – I defended myself."

"With your… _wand._"

Harry nodded, feeling the cold, dark core inside him start to pulse. He sighed angrily.

"Same as anyone else would have done," he said, forcing down the guilt.

"No," said Brother Sander with an uneasy laugh. "I expect they would struggle in their… 'defence' of themselves. At least a little more than you did."

"Why are you asking me this?" he challenged again, trying to tear his mind's eye from the woodland clearing. "You know I'm a wizard. Can you help me?"

"Help you with what?"

"With – with getting my wand back and getting out of here," said Harry, with a glance at the closed door behind him as he heard someone walk past beyond it.

Sander was quiet for a moment, his features changing to show confusion, anger and fleeting remorse.

"No," said the monk slowly. "It would be ungodly."

"This is a church for charity!" hissed Harry. "Saint Martin, and all that! Taking his clothes off to help a beggar... Brother Patrick said it was a church of charity. I'm grateful for the help, obviously, but why am I - why am I being treated like a prisoner?"

In that moment, he realised that he wasn't just saying it – he was indeed imprisoned. If the monks had taken his wand hostage, there was nowhere else he could go… their stares began to make more sense…

"You are not a prisoner," said Sander, with an air of finality. "And the monks do not have your wand. It was taken from you before you came here, and whilst we'll care for you as best we can while you're under our roof, I'm not going to help you track down an instrument of – of _heresy_."

As the monk made his way around Harry to the door, Harry grudgingly saw that it made some sense – magic probably went against Christianity in a number of ways. Even so, he wasn't convinced that a monk hadn't taken it. And if a monk _had _taken it, and someone like Sander knew what it was…

"I saved your life," said Harry quietly. Brother Sander froze in the doorway. "In the Church. You and the other monks. I'll die without a wand… I saved your _life_."

Sander still had his back to Harry… who had a sudden, vivid memory of the man knelt in front of the hole in the church wall, praying, refusing to be dragged through the hole, perfectly content to die... For a long moment the monk didn't move, or say anything.

"But not my immortal soul, child," said Sander, before squaring his shoulders and disappearing into the hallway.

Harry was left staring into the space that Sander had occupied, trying to work out what had just transpired. As it came together before his eyes, he felt the fear he'd managed to escape since waking up in the monastery start to return, creeping in unbidden: Sander knew he was a wizard.

'_He thinks I'm evil_,' thought Harry, more to the point.

…

The night was not a pleasant one. He'd had no more visitors for the rest of the evening and had lain on the cot almost reluctantly, not sleeping until well after the singing in the middle of the night had come to an end – it had lasted for at least an hour, after which he'd been plagued by dreams of blood and broken little girls and had woken up in a cold sweat, the world still dark around him, thinking he was in his room at the Dursleys'.

At dawn, almost to prove he could, he left the room immediately and joined the monks in the church for 'matins'. This service - Harry's first and last - involved yet more singing and a service entirely in Latin. Though he was largely ignored, it felt good to have some sort of company after the fraught night, and he spent half the time trying to think of a plan _beyond _the monastery, and the other half wondering why the monks even bothered to do all of these services every single day when it was only other monks who attended.

A great fat man with small, shrewd eyes and a sour smile took the service, arms raised for its entirety and straining the seams on his pristine white habit; his voice carried to the rafters of the squat chapel and was always the loudest during the long, droning hymns, raising in volume and exuberance when he felt the singing of the other monks was lacking. Harry thought the man looked like a great, floury dumpling.

During the service, the large white monk was the only person who would occasionally stare at Harry – every other monk ignored his presence in the church. In the front row Harry could see the blonde Brother Sander, the back of his tonsured head standing out among the browns and blacks. Harry could not spot Patrick.

As the monks filed out after the last song's rousing harmony had come to an end, Harry followed the crowd of men out and into what he heard called the 'refectory', where he sat and ate with them – a watery, alcoholic yellow stew and husk of rock-hard seedbread – and endured their stares once more. He kept his head down while he ate, absorbing all that went on around him. The whispered talk was mainly of 'Old Richard', who apparently was very ill, and the near-approaching Cooper's Fair in Bedford.

When Brother Sander stood and left, Harry followed him across the cloister. Harry called out to the man before he disappeared into the doorway of one of the outbuildings: the monk turned and looked about to admonish him for the lack of appellation before he saw who it was. He grimaced and turned away once more, pushing his way through the shadowy doorway – but leaving the door open behind him.

Harry sighed at the 'invitation' and followed the man through.

"You are becoming comfortable," said Sander the moment he was inside.

The room was cold and dark, despite the numerous candles dotted in tiny stone alcoves around them. Sander was at a lectern of some kind, similar to the one the fat monk had been using at the service that morning, scrutinising the end of a goose-feather quill carefully in the dim light. There were stacks of parchment scrolls and stretched vellum tomes on tables around the room, and away in the corner a very old monk sat perusing one.

"I wouldn't say 'comfortable' was the right word," said Harry. "But if I'm not going to be leaving anytime soon, I may as well get used to how things work here."

"And why won't you be leaving soon?" asked Sander slowly.

"Because I'm not going anywhere without my – my _possessions_," said Harry, eyeing the ancient monk in the corner. "And I'm getting frustrated, because I'm going around in circles, achieving nothing, and I have somewhere I've got to be."

Sander produced a tiny bone knife and began sharpening the end of the quill.

"I have told you," said the monk. "We do not have your _magic wand_, nor whatever else you said you had."

Harry's eyes snapped to the old monk in the corner, but there was no outward reaction from him.

"Brother Jacques," said Sander, guessing at Harry's sharp intake of breath, "is quite deaf. Speak freely."

"He's deaf?" asked Harry, moving around the wall of the room as though scared to be noticed by the old man.

"Yes," sighed Sander. "It is a shame, as he was a wonderful Cantor. As it is, he still looks after our modest library…"

"I wish I could help," said Harry, not untruthfully, glancing at the sparse shelves as a memory of Ron and Hermione in the near-endless Hogwarts library, from long ago, came up from the depths of his mind. He dragged himself back to the conversation. "What does a Sacrist do?"

"A Sacrist?" said Sander, turning to him. "I run the monastery on behalf of the Dean."

"Really?" said Harry, feigning interest but watching the monk carefully. "Telling everyone what to do…"

"No, not as such," the monk said with a shrug. "I ensure we are stocked with what we need. I oversee the care and harvesting of the Church's land, the collection of levies… A little more nowadays, admittedly, since Dean Richard has been ailing."

Harry had listened carefully to his voice, but there was no trace of pride in what the man said. In fact there was a note of sadness in the otherwise drawling accent. He couldn't think of a way to ask more about the Dean without making his attempts too obvious.

"Who was it taking the – uh, the service, then?"

The brief melancholy that had occupied Sander's face was gone before it could truly manifest itself. His features fell back into impassivity as he said, "Brother de Castelnau is visiting. I apologise if the singing in the night disturbs you – we normally pray in silence, but the Deacon prefers to hear the choir at Midnight Matins. He's in residence for another two days. He - his visit was unscheduled, and has had us in disarray."

"Okay," said Harry, unsure of the significance as Sander stared into space. "So – so as the Sacrist, you get to travel a lot? Patrick said you were one of the only monks who got to travel… Can you tell me how far are we from London?"

Sander turned away from him, saying "Why do you want to know? I thought you were going to Scotland."

"I am – I need to know how close I am."

"Close?" cried Brother Sander suddenly, spinning to face him once again. "Nowhere near close, boy! Hundreds of miles! More! You're not – you're not twenty leagues from London!"

Harry swore inwardly as his stomach sank, but said, "Someone told me Hertford was twenty leagues from London."

"No," Sander said, seeming to get himself under control again. "Hertord… twenty _miles_, if that. Not leagues. You aren't anywhere near, so you'd best set off."

He stood, staring at Harry with wide eyes as though waiting for him to leave. Harry didn't move, or say anything, annoyed that the carter had been wrong and growing angrier with Sander by the moment.

"Go _on_, then, boy," hissed Sander, actually making a shooing motion with his hands. "Go on to Scotland. You'll be given everything we can spare."

"Do you have a map?" asked Harry through his teeth, trying to reign in his temper.

"A… _map? _No – no I do not have a map, we don't have any maps here. You'll have to make do without."

"What is it that you don't understand?" Harry shouted, the monk's dismissal the last straw as far as he was concerned. "I'm _not _leavingwithout my _wand!_"

Sander's eyes went wide at the volume of Harry's voice, and his eyes shot to the doorway over Harry's shoulder.

"Do not raise your voice in this place!" the monk hissed, as though to a co-conspirator. "Have you not _heard _of Pierre de Castelnau?"

"I can't leave without it!" yelled Harry, uncaring. "I'll wait for this bloke to come back, this guy who confessed to Brother What's-His-Name, if I have to, but I will not walk out of this place without it! I _need _it: it belongs to _me_ and it's been stolen. Sander - _Brother _Sander - I cannot survive without it."

Everything was very still and quiet when Harry stopped shouting, Sander staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face, the candles flickering and the ancient monk in the corner reading away, oblivious, muttering inaudibly to himself.

Without further preamble, Brother Sander turned back to the lectern and softly closed the volume he'd been writing in. He lay the quill down on top of it and gathered the folds of his habit, sweeping them over one arm and turning to march around Harry to the door.

"On your own head be it," said the monk, not meeting his eyes as he passed. "It is the seventh hour - I must lead my Brothers in their writing."

Harry almost snarled in frustration, feeling practically helpless, and wanted to throw something at the bald spot on the monk's head as he marched through the door.

…

The smell didn't go away.

Harry had been shovelling manure with a stretch of misshapen wood for hours, having been found and recruited into the labour by Brother Patrick after lunch and yet another service. When the monks had gone in to pray and sing yet again, Harry had stayed out and continued working, wheeling a small hand-cart along and pitching the excrement evenly onto the field - doing, he believed, a a very good job of it considering that he was working one-handed.

It felt good to be doing something manual, despite the initial awkwardness that had arisen before working out which crook in his arm to use and what angle was best for the job. After days of lying helpless and having no hope of finding his wand or continuing to Scotland, doing _anything _to be helpful and achieve something was good, and the monks didn't stare at him while they all worked together in the spreading of manure, even though he was half as slow as the worst of them. They'd even loaned him a baggy habit to wear.

But the smell did not leave his nostrils.

Eyes watering yet again, Harry stood straight and sniffed, trying to clear the fumes and get his breath back. He leant on the spade-like instrument and absentmindedly cleared the muck from between his toes with it, his feet caked in a purer mud than any he'd seen in London. With every heavy step each foot sank to the ankle in the cold, sodden dirt and Harry found it to be an oddly liberating feeling on the mangled soles of his feet.

He'd been thinking about what the Sacrist had said. He'd had very little else to occupy himself with mentally as he underwent the menial task, and Sander's entire manner that morning had been peculiar. Harry was trying to figure out what the man was hiding… the obvious answer was 'my wand', but somehow Harry didn't think it would be that straightforward.

He tried to assimilate what he knew thus far; Patrick was a very strange, crooked old man who flipped from 'kindly-grandfather-mode', as Harry had christened it, to 'Ollivander mode' and back again within the blink of an eye… he also managed to achieve this both ways without losing an ounce of piety in the process. St. Martin's was a very small monastery – though for all Harry knew of the religious institutions of this time it might be enormous by comparison – and housed about fifty monks and one very fat deacon in a white habit, who was just visiting. It was twenty leagues from London and a league was farther than a mile. They had no maps – or maps didn't exist yet, which was a concept Harry struggled to believe - _or _Brother Sander had been lying. Harry had been brought here by this stranger in the woods who he'd shared the pigeon with, and at some point during that process someone had removed his wand, and everything else he'd been carrying.

It was obviously robbery: he'd been robbed. It was simple… and, admittedly, robbery didn't feel like the penchant of humble, reclusive monks, who forswore all worldly possessions to undergo lives of religious servitude. It was a crime of opportunity, and either guilt or the robbery being spontaneous had made the barrel-chested man carry him to St. Martin's... but he couldn't escape the feeling that there was more to it. Just a few feet from the surface he was being dragged deeper.

Harry couldn't figure out the monks themselves. Half seemed inclined to want him to leave as soon as possible, and the other half seemed to want him to stay so they could take care of him – or get some free labour on the farmland. Either way, they were clearly very uncomfortable with his presence in the monastery itself. This was either caused by the fact he was a _stranger_, and they didn't get a lot of those taking prolonged advantage of their hospitality, or because they knew or suspected that he was different to them somehow.

Harry looked around him as a few monks began to amble slowly back out onto the fields, released from their afternoon service. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck as he watched them refuse to meet his eyes, and realised he couldn't discount the possibility that Sander had _told_ everyone he was a wizard… Brother Sander, who thought either he or his magic was evil – his wand a 'tool of heresy' – and who would rather have died than be saved by magic in a church that was burning to the ground around him.

_'Mental_,' he heard Ron say in his head, and smiled wryly. He watched as the nearest monks began to remove their boots and sandals, piling them neatly in the footwell of one of the carts. Harry watched them surreptitiously from the corner of his eye, vaguely wondering what he was going to do for shoes for the remainder of his long walk to Scotland, when a thought struck him like a physical blow and he stood up straight, staring at the skyline.

He'd removed his shoes in front of the muscled stranger's campfire. He'd taken them off, shredded as they were, and discarded them... he'd sat trying to clear up his feet as the bird cooked on the flames.

_He'd taken off his shoes._

Patrick had said he'd had his shoes when he'd been brought in. 'Those strange ruined shoes' were the words he'd used. But he'd thrown them aside into the darkness... why would the stranger have brought his shoes with him, injured as he was? And... Patrick had even said he'd _had them on_. Why would a stranger who was robbing him find his shoes in the undergrowth, _put them on his feet_, then carry him to the nearest church?

None of it made sense and he hated himself for only just now seeing it. What's worse was that of everything Brother Patrick had told him, the cursory way he'd mentioned the shoes was one of the few things Harry would _swear _was the absolute, unembellished, subconsciously imparted truth. He began to get a very uneasy feeling up his spine, a chill not unlike the type a Dementor's presence brought, and he tried to tell himself that nothing was certain - there was an awful lot that he didn't remember - and a charitable stranger may well have put his shoes back on. He could have even done it himself.

_'I_ _just don't like Patrick,_' he told himself. '_He rubs me up the wrong way. Reminds me of Ollivander.'_

The feeling didn't go. He found himself to be holding the length of wood in his hand _very _tightly, and scooped another chunk of manure onto the field one-armed. Clenching his jaw, Harry decided that he'd be leaving on the next day. One way or another, he'd walk away from the monastery and leave them all to it. He continued watching the monks from the corner of his eye as they set to work on the fields before a way of knowing for sure who had taken his wand – and maybe why - contrived itself before his eyes, and he carried on at the spreading with his mind whirring.

Even if he was grasping at shadows, his problems weren't going to solve themselves, and he wasn't just going to sit around and do nothing. Not anymore.

…

He lay under the blanket, eyes clamped shut, in case somebody looked in. Nobody had on any prior night, but Harry was taking no chances.

Harry heard the monks shuffle past, some muttering sleepily, smelt the thick incense a couple carried down the hall, and kept his eyes closed as he went over his plan for what felt like the thousandth time.

He was dressed beneath the blanket - his stinking borrowed habit, the hem laboriously washed in the river during supper to rid it of the speckling manure, was far from clean but at least now smelt a little less. He could feel it, still damp, rubbing against his calves and he begged to scratch, but dared not move upon the worn old cot. His plan was to not be seen at all... but just in case he was, he hoped he'd pass as a monk from a distance.

The hallway quietened down as the last monks travelled through it and Harry waited, barely breathing, his mind seeing only the route he'd memorised during the 'Vespers' service, remembering his distances in paces and his corners by touch.

He thought he _probably _had the right destination... but he'd know soon enough.

He counted to thirty silently and, when he got there and the world beyond the doorway was still silent, he tossed back the cover and opened his eyes.

Darkness. He was almost, stupidly, surprised before his brain caught up with him and Harry reminded himself he'd planned for this.

He stood, careful despite the deserted building to not shift his weight on the cot too much, and moved forward in the darkness with his one usable arm held out before him.

'_...five...six.' _he counted out internally, and the oak door brushed against his outstretched fingertips. '_Easy._'

Finding the latch, he delicately lifted, and briefly considered before pulling it open that this almost, _almost _compared to the nerves he'd had before the First Task. The tournament that seemed an age away... and in a way was.

He stepped into the corridor, light on his bare feet, and crept towards the turning he'd trained his mind to recognise - twenty paces, _yes_ - and turning along the wall he moved forward a little faster, a little more confidently, and found the door after thirty-six paces, not thirty-four, but didn't care. It was working. Harry's fingers found the latch -

He nearly jumped out of his skin when the singing started. His heart, already beating fit to burst, was now going at a rate of knots. The hairs on the back of his arm rose as the basses roared in under the trebles and he felt like he'd just drained Pomfrey's entire January stock of Pepper-Up.

On the brink of a nervous chuckle, stifling the foreign urge, he opened the latch and pushed the door outwards. The iron hinges squealed but were muffled by the deafening choir, and he took a moment for his eyes to adjust – the moon was out, and the world was blue, save for the chapel: candlelight flickered red through the shaking wooden shutters and made the squat building look like an ominous, shuddering Jack-o'-Lantern which, with the nerve-rending din from its depths, combined to create an effect that was uniquely unsettling.

Trying to ignore it - to block out the thunderous voices and concentrate on the task at hand - his eyes scanned the cloister with a Seeker's precision before he moved into the open.

'_A count I didn't need to remember,_' he thought, trying to distract himself. '_Forty paces_.'

The singing had thrown him off a little. He'd expected it, but forgotten in the heat of the moment just how encompassing it could be. He was within a few yards of the church at his nearest; the ceaseless, fervent canon from within gripped his chest like a vice, the song travelling _through _him, and he hurried on.

He actually gasped when he reached the alcove opposite, breathless, surprised at how distracted he'd become. Steeling himself with his back toward the church, he squared his shoulders and walked straight into the shadows, his hand finding the ring-latch on the door before him.

It was stiff - he applied a little more strength and it gave. The door swung in, swallowed by the darkness beyond, and Harry stepped forwards.

He'd thought it was twelve paces to the next corner but found it in seven, furious with himself for the mistaken count and trying to get the order right again. He turned the corner and got his angle wrong, knocking his injured arm painfully into the wall before correcting himself, forcing his lungs to take long, measured breaths and trying to regain his concentration as he shuffled forwards, the chanting still looming over him in the jet-black hallway...

He remembered that he'd forgotten to close the outside door. That's why it was still so loud.

'_Too late_,' he told himself. '_Carry on. Fifteen - sixteen - seventeen _- '

At twenty-two, he found the door on his right hand side. Glad he'd got the count right, instructing himself to not just _forget _it on his way back, he found the latch - it was a lot stiffer, this one, and he'd not been able to test it earlier. He'd not seen a lock but had the brief, worrying mental image of a wooden bar across the inside flutter through his head before it clunked and opened.

As much darkness within as there was without. He took his hand off the latch, wryly acknowledging that an older outbuilding meant stiffer doors, and held his arm out before him as he stepped in - this was unexplored territory.

It was a smaller room than he'd expected. It took him only a quarter of an hour to search it thoroughly, finding nothing that would indicate a hidden wand or even so much as a locked trunk. Biting his lip in annoyance, Harry found his way to the door by simply following the direction in which the singing was loudest. He moved back into the hallway.

With a sudden crescendo, the choir stopped singing. Despite his fraught nerves, Harry didn't panic; there was a spoken service in Latin between hymns. There had been every night, and there would be tonight, too. There was at every service. He reassured himself of this as he walked down the hallway further, visualising it as it had looked when the brackets on the walls were lit during vespers, finding his way to the next door.

The singing started again. A slightly more melodic tune filled the silence, not quite as droning and driving - less fire and brimstone, more 'glory of God', Harry guessed, and a good omen. The image of Trelawny making predictions out of hymns amused him for a moment, vivid in the darkness, before he found the next doorway.

He became conscious of the fact that he'd need to move faster. He didn't know how long he'd been so far, but they were through the first song already and into the second. He pushed the door inwards and moved forward, surprised to find some moonlight filtering in through an empty window. He looked around the room, eyes straining in the dim light, and moved to a shadowy corner to begin his search.

A few minutes later and he'd finished. He'd raced through the room, shoving instead of shuffling things out of his way, working with a renewed vigour out of desperation. He'd not planned further than the first room - what he'd thought was where Patrick was sleeping in lieu of his own cell, based on the monk's own description - and thoughts quickly turned to the possible need to come back and try again the next night, and the night after, until he'd ransacked the entire monastery and _found his wand_.

Back in the corridor, white smudges blurring his vision where the moonlight had burned into his retinas, he marched further and dragged his right hand along the uneven wall until he found another door. With no preamble this time, he jammed the latch upwards and threw it open, striding into the pitch black room and wondering which direction he should start in.

"Sack..." said a weak voice.

Frozen to the spot, Harry thought he might have imagined it.

"_Sack_..." it said again.

Silent, hoping irrationally that he'd not been heard, he felt his heartbeat start up once more. He tried to decide what to do. The music was still pouring in through the doorway... he wondered whether he should just back out and close it again, skipping this room.

For lack of a better idea, that is what he did - trying his hardest to be silent, he moved directly backwards, and when the change in acoustics told him he'd entered the corridor once more he leaned in and pulled the door slowly closed.

And then he stood staring at it, trying to restore order to his own thoughts. Oddly, after the nerve-wracking experience he'd had by the chapel, he wasn't scared or worried in any way. He was simply confused, wondering who on earth might be in the room, saying 'sack' over and over again, whatever that meant...

The Dean's quarters - the only 'bedroom' built for more than just a bed, desk and coffer - was on the other side of the monastery, in the same building Harry slept in. He had assumed, since he'd heard that morning about Dean Richard - or 'Old Richard' - being sick, that this is where the head of the monastery would be if not in the church itself.

The image of a very large man in white came to mind, and Harry grit his teeth in annoyance - the _Deacon_, de Castelnau, whoever he was. He had no idea what a 'Deacon' was, but if it outranked a 'Dean' there was no reason he wouldn't have taken Richard's room. But even if the man was ill?

Harry remembered the white monk's shrewd, glittering eyes and flabby jowls and decided grimly that yes, he'd probably have kicked the sick Dean from his quarters if so inclined.

The door swung open in front of him and a figure moved out. Harry inadvertently stepped backwards as a small, crooked shape lurched forward from the shadows. The figure stopped, and so did he, his back to the wall opposite the door, his eyes straining to make out the silhouette of the man in the darkness.

After a deep, shuddering breath, the man said, "_Wine_, idiot..."

"Wine?" repeated Harry, eyes wide in the black, his sense of smell overwhelmed by the decrepit figure's reeking presence.

"_Sack_!" the man wheezed. "Wine! Sack! Bring me some - something to _drink_!"

Harry nodded, astonished, before realising the daftness of the action. He turned and started to walk back the way he'd come.

"Wait," said the old man behind him, and Harry found he'd paused - following an order again despite himself. "Can't wa - walk around in bloody bla - _black_ness."

The man, who by this point Harry had to assume was Dean Richard, turned and shuffled back into the room. Harry simply stood, staring at where he guessed the door was, unsure why he was obeying but starting to subconsciously develop a course of action.

With a click and a spark, an orange light flickered to life within the cell, illuminating the doorway and the floor beyond it. Harry winced at the sudden light, coming just as he'd become accustomed to the darkness, and the old man appeared in the door with a squat candle held in one hand. In the firelight, Harry got the chance to see him properly - very old, much older than he sounded due to the belying strength in his voice, and covered in sweat. He was also shivering slightly, his eyes flicking from one vacant space to another and then finally settling on Harry.

The Dean thrust the candle at him.

"One of - of _his _lot," the old man stated, before turning back into the room and disappearing into darkness once more.

Harry stood holding the candle, his shock still outweighing all other reaction, until he remembered the command for wine. Wanting to get the potentially raving Dean into conversation, he hurried up the hallway and went into the nearest room - one he'd missed while searching - and found a clay jug by the cot. There were no cups there. By the proximity of this room to the Dean's and the rags piled up on the floor, he guessed that this was where his retainers had been relocated to.

He smelt the contents of the pitcher and verified it to be very weak wine. He balanced the candle carefully on his injured hand, grasping it with what little strength he had in his fingers, before carrying the jug back into the Dean's room just in time to find the old man relieving himself in a chamber pot - and on the floor nearby. He turned his back, astonished at the course his midnight sojourn had taken, until he heard the grumbling and spattering stop.

"Pour," the old man wheezed.

Reminding himself the man was sick, Harry made his way to the cot and found a metal goblet - the only opulent thing he could see in the room - his eyes anywhere but on the old monk. Standing it upright, he poured a half-measure in and left it by the bed, moving aside so that the Dean could get in. The whole bed and room reeked of urine and sweat, as though the feverous Dean had grown to be a part of it.

The old man staggered forwards and lowered himself awkwardly onto the straw, his night-clothing a stained, grubby long shirt and hampering his movement. Harry stood awkwardly, looking resolutely away, wondering what in Merlin's name he'd done to end up where he was.

"Frenchmen," spat the old man after a slurp of wine. "Bloody Fre - _French_man. His music. In..."

Harry waited despite himself, until it became clear that the Dean had no intention of finishing his sentence. Harry put down the clay jug next to him as he knelt by the cot, expecting to see the old man asleep already and surprised to find the man's eyes were focused on him.

In a moment of surprising clarity, the Dean said breathlessly, "What were you do - _do_ing in my room?"

"I - the Deacon sent me," said Harry, hoping his lie would hold.

"To - to kill me?"

Harry wondered how many times he could be shocked speechless in the space of an hour. He decided that the old man _was _raving, and that it was time to take control of the conversation.

"No," he said. "To see... uh, rather, to fetch the stick."

"What _stick_?" hissed the old man after another shuddering breath. His eyes were flicking around again, as though he was constantly noticing things in his peripheral vision. "Blo - French music … in _white_..."

"The - uh - the _magic _stick."

The eyes slammed back onto Harry and after a moment the old man shook. Harry saw he was laughing and knew he'd made a mistake.

The old man didn't seem amused in any genial way - it was a cruel laughter, even though it was silent, and Harry felt himself begin to lose his temper. He knew it would sound ridiculous if the old man didn't know what he was on about, but he'd suspected - or, if not suspected, at least hoped - that the monks might have taken his wand. That the Dean might know about it, and thus be able to tell him where it was...

As the laughs became coughs, no longer silent, Harry dashed some more wine into the cup and thrust it to the old man, who sucked the pink liquid in gratefully between heaves. His frustration was growing, and with it, desperation.

"Sorry to disturb you, Dean," said Harry, trying to sound like a humble monk despite his annoyance. "Goodnight."

He stood, taking the candle from his injured hand and holding it before him as he turned to the door.

"M'not the Dean," said the old man as he reached the hallway.

Harry paused. The singing was still going - they'd changed to a new hymn, and he hadn't even noticed when, but he was certain he'd heard the man correctly.

"What?" he asked, his voice hollow to his own ears.

The old monk didn't answer. Harry turned and moved back to the bed, standing over the now-asleep old man - an old, sweaty monk once more cast into flickering light, and suddenly understood the stink of piss and wine on him.

"You're not ill," he said. "You're _drunk_."

The man's eyes remained closed.

"And you aren't the Dean," said Harry, again more to himself than the old man.

Mixed in with the fury and embarrassment was the slightest glimmer of hope. He put the candle down on the floor and leaned over the drunkard, grasping him with his arm and giving him a good, hard shake.

Spluttering, the old man came to, his eyes rolling to meet Harry's and his face contorting. He opened his mouth, but before he could get a word out, Harry pushed his face very close to the drunk's and bared his teeth.

"Who are you?" he bit out.

"Ge - get off - "

"_Who_ are you? Answer!"

"Bro - Brother Duncan," stammered the man, his eyes focusing and now looking a little scared. "Let go - "

"Where's the Dean?" spat Harry.

"I..." stuttered the old man, his eyes widening and now apparently terrified. "Don't hur - hurt me..."

Harry let him go and picked up the candle once again.

"If you don't tell me what I want to know, I'll burn you with this candle," he said.

"He's in his bed!" whimpered the drunk, lip shaking. "Don't burn me! He - he's in his quarters - weren't my fault, I didn't know - I tho - thought he were sleeping!"

'_No good, too close to the service_,' thought Harry, wracking his brains for more to ask before his brain caught up with what the monk had said and he felt a chill run down his spine.

"What do you mean you _thought _he was asleep?" asked Harry quietly.

His sudden change in demeanor seemed to scare the old man even more.

"Be - because he's dead! He's dead - don' hurt me - I found him, I _found _him - old Richard, dead in his bed..."

_So Sander was lying_, Harry realised. _Or was he?_

"The Dean was dead," clarified Harry, and the old man shivered, muttering. "I thought he was just ill?"

Despite his terror - or perhaps because of it - there was no answer in anything more than a slight increase in the old man's trembling. His eyes were still slightly glazed over from the alcohol.

'_Maybe Sander didn't lie to me_," he considered, and as his thoughts turned to the Sacrist, his mind cast too to Patrick and he tried to think of something to ask. Failing to come up with anything relevant, fearing his time running out, he jumped to the nearest thing he could think of.

"Why were you visiting the Dean?"

"I sat with 'im," whispered the old man. "I sat with 'im, in the ni - nights, during matins... he hated the music - hated it, and I'd sat with 'im - but toni - tonight, he were dead..."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Harry, a little guilty to be brushing it aside so swiftly. "You were - um - friendly with the Dean?"

The old man nodded, still staring terrified at Harry. The boy took a deep breath and decided to simply outright ask it.

"Do you know about the wizard?"

The old man barely blinked, and nodded. Harry stared, feeling his pulse behind his ears, growing angrier - no surprise, no confusion, nothing. Yes, he knew about the wizard, of course he did - everyone knew about the wizard.

"Where's his stuff?" spat Harry.

Lip quivering, the old man eyed the candle as he shook his head.

"I will burn you," said Harry, hoping the old man didn't call his bluff. "Where are they keeping the wizard's belongings?

"I don't - I don't know!"

"_Who_ knows?"

"Brother Pierre!"

Harry actually growled in frustration. Yet another person he'd never heard of.

Unwilling to actually burn the old man, no matter how infuriated he was, Harry stepped away from the bed with the candle, his mind whirring as he tried to piece together the extremely confusing conversation; the Dean was actually _dead_, for some reason. In his bed. This old drunk - Brother Duncan, a normal monk - had found the man. This man was also 'Old Richard'. Now someone called Pierre had his things - despite himself, he felt a thrill of justified loathing as he thought of Sander. The man had been lying to him. Everyone there knew he was a wizard, and yes, the monks _had _taken his stuff.

But he had just as many unanswered questions. He looked at the fat, soft candle in his hand and, hating himself for it, decided he'd have to do something to get the drunk to say more.

'_I'll just scare him_,' Harry told himself.

He turned back to the old man and approached with the candle, holding it threateningly. To Harry's surprise, it worked a bit - the man wheezed out a yelp and flinched.

"I'm going to burn you now," said Harry. "Unless you tell me more. I'm... I'm going to burn your hair off."

He moved the candle over the monk's head. The old man cried out slightly, covering his thinning hair, and Harry felt disgust with himself creeping into his sternum... but still, the old man didn't speak. Harry sucked in breath through his teeth.

"A'right!" screamed the old man, finding his voice abruptly - the volume almost caused Harry to flinch. "He had them! I don't know where, but he brought them in with 'im - "

"Who!" Harry shouted back. "Who had them? Tell me names!"

"Pierre - Brother Pierre! Your master - the bloody Frenchman!"

_'My master?' _thought Harry, confused, but things were beginning to piece together in his mind. The Frenchman was Brother Pierre - Pierre de Castelnau, the 'just visiting' Deacon. The fat monk in white. The one who had his gold, the Circlet, and _his wand_... one and the same. It was as though a veil had been lifted... but beyond was only shapeless smoke.

"Wait - did you say the Deacon brought m- er, the wizard, to St. Martin's?" he asked.

"Yes," said the old monk. His eyes were barely focusing on anything in his drunkenness.

"What about the mug - er, the man, the man who wasn't a monk - the big man, huge chest, who..." Harry paused for a moment, astonished that he'd not seen it sooner. "Who _you _interviewed! Who confessed to _you_! You're Brother Duncan, you heard the man's confession!"

But the drunk was shaking his head, muttering, "Di'nt hear no confession. Don't take confessional."

"Brother Patrick said you - said Brother Duncan - took a man's confession. The man who brought me here."

The drunk's eyes widened and he finally met Harry's eyes again.

"_Witch_," Duncan breathed.

Harry realised his slip, but it was too late, and he didn't care - he was so close! He knew who had his things, now he needed to know _how _and _why _and figure out what on earth he was going to do to get them back.

Harry adjusted his position, taking a breath to ask again, and forgot about the candle still poised over the man's head. It tipped, causing a dollop of hot, sticky wax to drop onto the man's forehead - presumably it felt a lot like the flame had been pressed to him, because the monk screamed in pain and terror, flailing reflexively and striking the candle with the back of his hand. It blew out half-way across the room, and the two were suddenly plunged into darkness.

The man kept flailing, screaming louder, and Harry was horrified to hear a lack of singing in the background. As he was struck in the face by the man's swinging fist, he jumped away from the bed to head towards the door, but put his foot down on the jug... which smashed.

Shouting in pain, he fell to his knees before trying once again to get up.

Voices began to echo down the corridor. Shouts rose up, calling Duncan's name - the monks were back from their service, and Harry hadn't even noticed. Orange lights from handheld candles illuminated the wall outside the doorway.

As Harry stood, not putting weight onto his newly ruined foot, the last thing he saw before Duncan grabbed something from the floor behind him and a swinging, piss-filled chamber pot smashed into his skull was Brother Sander in the doorway, sheer astonishment naked on his face.

…

Never again, he decided. Never again would he complain about being 'imprisoned', or use it as any sort of metaphor. Until now - bleeding and shackled as he was in a cell beneath the Refectory - he'd had no idea what being imprisoned really was.

He felt embarrassed; he'd used the term to complain to Brother Sander about having a bed and an open door and three meals a day. He'd used it often to describe his life at the Dursley house during the summers; he'd even described it like that to _Sirius_, who had actually _been _imprisoned for twelve years, Dementor guardians _et all_.

Unwilling to shackle his broken arm - they were still monks, after all, and apparently had some sense of humanity despite his 'evil' - they'd strapped it tight to his body with rope. His remaining arm and two legs were clapped in manacles, chaining him very effectively to the wall and floor. Even had he been able to escape the shackles, the room had no breach - a small pail beside him was intended for his waste, judging by the smell from it, and the entrance to the tiny cell was a thick oak door that he'd only seen one side of. Other than the chains and manacles, these were the only features in the tiny cell. He only knew the Refectory was above the cell by the sounds the scraping benches made above the ceiling as fifty monks sat down to eat.

He'd woken up, head pounding and habit drenched in sour-smelling urine, what felt like days ago - he'd lost count of the amount of meals he'd heard take place ten feet above his head. The frustration he felt with the whole thing - with himself for getting caught, with the monks for imprisoning him, with the Sacrist for lying to him, with the Deacon for stealing his things - had bubbled down into a simmering, _justified _anger that was the only thing standing between himself and utter hopelessness.

This anger allowed him to forget the pain in his broken arm, strapped as it was to his chest. It allowed him to ignore the cutting iron manacles that dug into his wrist and ankles, to forget about the pangs of hunger that were starting to clasp his stomach, to shake his head free of the guilt that pressed down upon it at the thought of what he'd done to Duncan in an effort to gain information. Most importantly, it allowed him to stay resilient.

There was little to no warning, after this eternity of sitting, angry, chained to the wall, when the lock in the door clunked and it opened, admitting a fat monk dressed in a white habit that looked yellow in the torchlight.

Deacon de Castelnau stood before Harry as another monk closed the door behind him. An enormous silhouette, he cut an imposing figure in his voluminous robes... or would have, had Harry not been quite so angry.

"Well," he croaked, sitting as confidently in the chains as he could. "You must be room service."

There was no reply. Harry tried to reign in his anger a little - enough to coherently decide whether to try and reason with the man, or just piss him off. He had a strange feeling that neither would prove fruitful, despite the perverse satisfaction that the latter might yield.

"Could you let me out, please?" he asked sweetly.

The fat Deacon raised an eyebrow at him, sniffing in distaste as he peered around the cell. Harry felt annoyance bubble up at the man's attempt to pretend he wasn't there - and even after he'd asked _nicely_. '_Ignore me, will you, fatty? After chaining me up like a sideshow?_' Beyond mere annoyance, though, he was swept up by a perverse recklessness - a need to repay every physical trauma he'd endured thus far back onto the huge monk tenfold, mentally if necessary, no matter the cost to himself. He refused to simply back down and let the man have his way.

"Shining example of the impoverished monk _you _are," spat Harry, glaring at the man's enormous gut. "You know you're supposed to be charitable to something _beyond_ your own appetite, yeah?"

Face bathed in shadow, the monk's eyebrows rose in surprise at the barb before a small smile crept onto his features. Harry smirked back, glad at a reaction - no matter how small - and though he was unsure where he was finding the words from, he suddenly had a whole lot more to say.

"Devil," de Castelnau suddenly announced to the cell, deep voice ringing with a trace of French. "I stand before thee in the name of the Almighty God, and His Church of Rome, to denounce thee."

"You're not going to try and eat me, are you?"

The man's smile flickered and a barely noticeable flush crept onto his flabby cheeks.

"Oh God," said Harry, miming horror. "That's exactly what you're going to do, isn't it?"

"A trial has been held," intoned the Deacon. "Over which I have presided as senior official of the Church. For the murder of the Dean of St. Martin's, and the general practice of Witchcraft, Satanic worship and Devilry against the Church, you have been found guilty - "

"Wait," said Harry, wincing at the comment about killing the Dean and wishing he'd not been so rough with Duncan. "I wasn't invited to my own trial? But - but I've been there for _all _my trials..."

The Deacon stood in silence, staring at Harry as though he were insane.

"I do not understand," the monk said flatly after a moment, his smile now gone completely.

"You don't... well, _that's _fairly obvious," said Harry, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "What you _do _understand wouldn't fill a teacup. I'm asking: Where's my chance to defend myself?"

"Your judgement will be before the Almighty. _We _do not wish to hear what you have to say, _devil!_" hissed the Deacon, composure slipping as loathing flashed onto his face. "You will speak in riddles and bewitch us."

"Not as long as you have my _wand_, you bastard," growled Harry, leaning forward as far as his chains would allow. "I've been meaning to ask you about that."

The fat monk's smile grew once more as he seemed to remember where he was. His eyes flicked to the manacles and briefly to the waste bucket before sliding back to Harry.

"You are powerless, demon," said the Frenchman with relish. "Entirely powerless. The Church has decreed that you are to be burned. Your sacrilegious imitation of mortal flesh will blacken and turn to ash as you are cast into the hellfire from whence you came."

His eyes had glittered more and more as he spoke, and despite his anger and fun at the monk's expense, Harry felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He glared ever defiantly, though, despite the quiver of unease he was starting to feel.

"You get a real kick out of this, don't you?" spat the boy, forcing his expression into a fierce grin. "It's got nothing to do with God. Be honest - you do it for kicks. You get a real pleasure out of this - _sexual _pleasure, right? It turns you on - gets you all hot and bothered - that's why you disappear for twenty minutes to the confessional after a good burning, eh? Get a little release - those robes do look bloody tight on you - "

"Silence!" stuttered the Deacon, looking mortified.

" - maybe go find a nice, plump altar boy to have your way with. A fresh-faced novice - "

"_QUIET!" _roared the monk, jolting towards Harry with his bejewelled fists clenched as though to strike him.

"That's a pretty ring," said Harry, louder, unconcerned. "Did your husband buy you that?"

With an outraged roar, the monk heaved a huge leg up and drove his booted foot into Harry's face.

The back of his head hit the stone wall and he felt his nose crunch and collapse under the weight. He saw white for a moment at the impact and his head slumped forwards, his arm chafing against the manacle on his wrist where he half-hung from the wall.

"Your _blasphemy_ will not go tolerated, _witch!_" the monk was screaming, his voice reverberating around the tiny cell. "You will burn under a purging flame! Your witchery will not work on _me!_"

As the Deacon gasped for breath, the physical exertion of kicking a shackled prisoner seemingly too much for him, Harry spat blood into his lap and smiled brokenly up at where he swam in his vision.

"Did I hit a nerve?" he mumbled.

He expected the fat monk to kick him again, but the man simply stood, shaking with rage, staring at Harry with his fists clenched.

"Your gold will go towards my palace when I am Archdeacon," hissed the monk, voice trembling. "The broken crown will be melted and made into jewellery for the Bishop of Rome."

"Returning the favour?" asked Harry, the coppery taste of his own blood driving him to recklessness. "He did get you that ruby one for your anniversary, after all."

"His Holiness' favour will be used to put a company of armed men out to catch the rest of your brethren... and your _wand _of sorcery will join my collection," finished the monk breathlessly.

That was perhaps the most chilling thing of all, Harry realised as he met the furious Deacon's shining eyes... eyes that seemed to catch some ethereal light that had no source. He'd burnt others - who knew how many? And who knew how many were _actually _witches and wizards? He really did enjoy it. He got some perverse satisfaction from doing this sort of 'God's work' - more so than forcing monasteries he visited to sing earth-shaking songs in the middle of the night, than bullying other monks and currying favour from his superiors. There was no holiness, no piety, in him, he knew. He burnt people for a living- probably children, too, knowing how accidental magic could be...

As he stared into the glittering depths of Pierre de Castelnau's eyes, Harry decided that he would remember this man. For as long as he lived. He decided that if he could, if he had time before returning home, he'd put a stop to his trail of burning 'justice'... because Harry felt sure that one day _he'd _be the one standing over a bleeding, broken Deacon de Castelnau. How, exactly, he didn't know, but by Merlin he was _Harry Potter_. That had to count for something. He'd lost count of the amount of people who wanted to kill him. He'd lost count of the amount of times they'd tried.

Anger was replaced with firm, cold resolution, and he communicated as much with his eyes as the monk continued to spit on him and quote scripture at deafening volumes... indeed, even after the Deacon left, Harry held on to it like a lifeline.

…

The Deacon didn't visit him again. He started to be fed - presumably, they didn't want him starving to death before the burning - and the deaf Brother Jacques was usually the one spooning sticky oats into his mouth a few times a day. Throughout this process the ex-Cantor didn't meet Harry's eyes once, but simply knelt in front of him, fed him the quarter-bowl, placed a wet rag in his mouth for him to suck the moisture from, and then stood, knocking on the cell door again to be let out. The one exception to this routine was the first time the old monk had entered, when he'd used the damp rag to clear some of the blood from Harry's face around his broken nose.

Despite the added pain he was in, Harry was glad he'd shaken up the Deacon. His company wasn't entirely appreciated, first of all, but mainly it reassured him that he still did have some sort of power. De Castelnau's diatribe about him being 'entirely powerless' had played over and over in his head while he'd been trying to think up a way to escape; short of the most convenient burst of accidental magic _ever_, he was growing crucially short of ideas.

What's worse was that despite his defiance, Harry really was in a bad way. Even though he was now being fed occasionally, he'd been unable to do anything more than doze for a few minutes at a time before pain jolted through his manacled wrist where it was suspended above his head, and he jerked awake, still in the unending, sputtering orange that the sole torch on the wall of the cell provided. His broken arm, strapped so tightly against his chest, no longer hurt in the same incessant way - it had become a dull throb, and Harry was sure the trauma it had endured was causing it to set improperly at the strange angle across his chest.

The rest of his joints had grown stiff in the time he'd been there, stuck in the same position, to the point where even free of the chains he wasn't sure if he'd be able to move. He was fairly sure he was concussed - the repeated hits to the back of his head had caused a migraine that was as painful as it was constant. Having his eyes open for too long or staring directly at the flaming torch made it worse - he'd resolved to stare only into the shadows in an effort to quell a little of the pain.

Perhaps most _embarrassing _of all was that the stench of excrement on him no longer belonged solely to Brother Duncan. The waste bucket was impossible to reach, much less use, without access to any of his limbs... despite it being the least of his worries, faces kept coming to him as he lapsed in and out of consciousness; faces from Hogwarts, friends and enemies both, leering at him out of the dim with appropriately delighted or horrified expressions at his situation. He saw Hagrid more than anyone else, bizarrely - the half-giant's big, child-like expression of horror and angst, appalled to see his friend in such a state, came to him constantly. Harry knew his brain was playing tricks - that he was wallowing somewhat when the resilience slipped and the faces of those he loved and hated looming out at him was his own way of feeling sorry for himself... but he couldn't fight it. Nor did he want to. There were only so many ways his brain could deal with sitting in his own mess, and if he was projecting self-pity into the shadows around him then so be it.

...and he missed his friends. Seeing them hurt, but not as much as not seeing them.

He'd been fed by Jacques only six or seven times, but Harry was starting to grow impatient. He had no idea what he was going to do, but whatever it was he knew it wouldn't happen in the cell. He'd have a chance - a small chance - when they took him to be burned... but six or seven small meals could have spanned the length of two days or ten. He had no way of telling. And he was starting to grow very weary of his situation.

'_Why won't they get on with it?'_ he asked himself repeatedly. '_How complicated could it possibly be? Build a pyre or whatever, drag me out and crack on with the fire and brimstone. They've already done the trial - I'm a wizard, I even confirmed as much to him in this very cell. What's he waiting for?_'

When he was up to it, he imagined all of the things he could do with a wand at that moment. He'd squint around the cell, mentally performing the wand movement and incantation, envisioning his grand, dramatic, _magical _escape from St. Martin's-upon-Ouse in a flash of spellfire. _Alohomora_ on the manacles, he'd think, starting small. _Diffindo _on the ropes. _Confringo _on the door - a big one, blasting it out of the way and into dust. When he had his wand, he knew, he wouldn't be sneaking around much more - big and loud and scary was the way to do it. In the hallway now - a _Stupefy _on the guard ought to suffice. Maybe a _Petrificus Totalus_, depending on whether he recognised them or not - he'd want them to be conscious, unable to move, if he knew who they were. Patrick, maybe. Or Sander. Maybe a jinx with a little sting in it if it was one of those two.

But then he'd get creative - _Anapneo! _he'd cry, forcing air into the nearest flame and causing a small explosion. He'd always wanted to try it, ever since learning the 'Airways Charm' which forced air into something and was intended as a Healing spell, but he'd never had the chance... the Gryffindor common room not being the optimal location for practicing explosions. _Expulso _he'd use to banish any and all from his path, invisible barges on everything on his way just like he'd used on Sander to propel him from the burning church. And when he found the Deacon... _Sagis! _was one of the only _real _curses he knew. Something painful, which he learnt only to learn the counter to and swore to himself to never use - the 'Arrow Firing Curse', which supporters of Appleby used to celebrate with before it was outlawed, and barring an Unforgivable the most dangerous spell Harry knew...

And then he'd jerk awake again, staring at Malfoy or McGonagall or Hagrid or Neville or Brother Jacques in the shadows, and aware all the more of the pains that wracked his body.

Then at one point, before Harry had become aware, the torch on the wall gave one last little sputter before dying, and he was plunged into darkness.

'_Count your paces, Harry,_' he told himself, grinning stupidly. '_Feel for the corners_. _Listen for the singing._'

Harry started as dozens of benches began to scrape around above his head. Blearily, he stared at where the vaulted wooden ceiling would be in the darkness, and listened as the monks sat down to whatever meal it was they were now having. The low buzz of hushed conversation drifted down to him and he imagined that they were discussing him - discussing the impending burning, hopefully blessedly soon, and whispering about the evils of the 'witch' they'd all caught. The 'witch' that had worked with them on their own field, that had sat in their own church one morning... that very young man who lay just a few feet below them in his own excrement, feeling as though he was rotting away.

The door clunked - Harry stared into the darkness in the direction of it, realising that there was no noise from the ceiling and the meal had ended, then unsure suddenly of where he was before he remembered... '_is this it?_' he wondered, suddenly nervous.

It wasn't - the door swung inwards and from a tiny window in the hallway light poured in. Harry flinched and tore his eyes away, agony screaming through his brain at the burning on his retinas, but not before he'd caught a glimpse of tall, blonde Brother Sander in the doorframe, an expression of utter contempt marring his features.

As Harry struggled to shuffle away from the light, trying to get his body to respond, he heard the priest mutter, "The brand's out. Fetch us another."

There was silence after the other person trotted off to find a replacement torch. Harry still hadn't opened his eyes, and was trying to remember how to speak, trying to get the words out, trying to protest any _more _light in the room - surely no more light was necessary? Were they trying to blind him as well as burn him, now?

But he couldn't. Instead he lay there, silent, not moving, waiting, and Sander said nothing.

Within a moment more light lit the corridor beyond, and Sander took the torch from the other monk - Brother Jacques - and held it before him as he entered the cell. As the firelight illuminated him, Harry heard a gasp.

With the shadow of a wry grin stretching itself over his broken face, Harry found his voice.

"I'm told St. Mar - St. Martin was one of..." he muttered weakly, trying to remember the words Patrick had used. "- one of the main saintly examples of charity."

Sander stood silent, seemingly shocked into a stupor, until he remembered what he was doing and pulled the old brand from the bracket on the wall and replaced it with the new, merrily burning one.

"I - I did not know you had been chained."

He seemed almost unwilling to look at Harry.

"Turns out I'm harder to kick in the face if I can move around," said Harry, coughing a laugh and wishing his voice wasn't quite so hollow. "You here to take me out?"

"No," said Sander, still staring resolutely at anything but Harry. "It will not be today."

Harry bared his teeth, swallowing dryly, before asking "What the hell is he waiting for?"

"He wants you weaker," said Sander quietly. "He is scared of you. All of us are."

'_Oh,'_ thought Harry. '_That makes sense_ - _and bugger, it's working. Much longer in here and I won't even be conscious when I'm dragged out_.'

"Brother Pierre still believes you to have some hidden tricks," continued Sander, as though his curiosity was getting the better of him. "But you cannot be in such a hurry to be burnt."

"What the fuck are you even doing here?" spat Harry suddenly, his voice gaining a little strength as he remembered his anger at the man. "Come to gloat?"

"I - "

"_You_ are lying scum," Harry said, coughing hollowly again. "You are no monk. There is no God here."

Sander seemed surprised at his sudden vehemence, and grew angrier himself.

"I came here because I wanted to ask you _why_," the Sacrist hissed. "Why would you do such a thing when we were trying to help you?"

"Because you lied about my damned wand," growled Harry. "I told you I wasn't leaving without it."

"The Dean didn't have your wand!" shouted Sander, looking genuinely upset. "He didn't have it! Nobody knew the Deacon had taken it!"

"What's the Dean got - oh, in Merlin's name," croaked Harry, realisation setting in. "I didn't kill your blasted Dean."

"You were attempting a ritual!" the blonde monk screamed. "A dark rite! And it killed a pious man - an innocent! An ailing monk! A man of _God!_"

"I didn't kill the fucking Dean!" spat Harry, coughs wracking his body again. "Ask Duncan! He found the man in his bed - he'd died in his sleep. I wasn't anywhere near the Dean."

"You _bewitched _Duncan!" said the monk, sounding horrified. "He screamed for hours - _hours _- that his head was on fire, that you'd tortured him. Brother Pierre had to _exorcise _him!"

"_What_ a load of bollocks!" laughed Harry, jubilant despite the state of him, and thought he probably sounded quite insane. "That bloody monk - that _Deacon _- has you chasing your own tails. 'Had to exorcise him' - I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. The old bastard was _drunk_. Wax dripped off the candle and landed on him, and he freaked - before braining me with his sodding chamber pot."

Sander stared at him, shaking his head, refusing to believe a word he was saying.

"How would I have 'bewitched' him without my wand, stupid?" said Harry, now determined to prove the monk wrong. "I can't do magic without my wand, remember? That's why I've refused to leave this disgusting excuse for a - a 'House of God.' Without that, and the crown, and the money that I _do not have_, I can't go anywhere."

To his surprise, and joy, he saw the tiniest flicker of doubt appear in Sander's eye as the man stared at the floor, face contorting in confusion... but just as quickly it was gone, and the monk met his eyes, expression hard.

"Silence," commanded the Sacrist. "Be _silent _now. You are bewitching me as well. Your tongue still has magic. They were unsure at first, because you are not a woman, but I knew and I - I stupidly convinced them that you might not be. I tried to save you, to give you time to leave... and all for _this. _The murder of Old Richard."

"That's amazing, thanks so much for the help," Harry said sarcastically, frustrated. "But what now? You're completely happy for them to burn me. You don't _honestly _believe I killed the Dean, because I didn't, because it wouldn't make_ sense_, and yet you'll put aside every great Christian value you hold so dear and let them burn an innocent boy - a boy who saved your _life_, no less - because I was born with something I can't control, and because you're happy to listen to the nonsense of that fat, psychotic, torturing _Deacon _who just wants to burn me for the hell of it!_"_

He was panting - his voice had risen as he'd gone on, and now he was short of breath, wheezing in the chains and glaring pointedly. Sander stared at him icily, eyes narrowed, and several times seemed on the point of saying something. The silence dragged as Harry kept his eyebrows raised, as if to say, 'Anything else?', furious that anyone could be so short-sighted.

Eventually, quietly, the Sacrist huffed a breath and turned away, standing for a moment with his back to him.

"I will inform the Deacon that you are still capable," he said. "You will be kept in here for a few days more, at least. You... if you had been repentant, then perhaps..."

He trailed off. Harry simply stared, still infuriated but feeling as though he'd just missed an important opportunity, as Sander took the torch from the bracket on the wall and walked out of the still open door.

"Thou Shalt Not Kill," quoted Harry quietly as the door slammed shut and he was plunged into darkness, left to dwell in pain and discomfort on the unfairness of it all as he began to slowly, carefully acknowledge the likelihood of being burnt alive.

…

The shock of falling jerked him awake. His arm, stiff and bruised, had been released from the manacle that held it and his head bounced off the stone as he slid down the wall.

Drool and dried blood down his chin, vision blurred, he took in the shadowy shape leaning over him and the single tiny candle by the door, the darkness beyond the doorframe, the distant singing pouring in from outside and the large iron key that was now being put into one of the shackles around his ankles.

"No," he breathed, trying and failing to move - to shuffle, even - away from the figure, use his stiff arm _at all _to bat away the threat, determined to fight, to not let them take him without some sort of resistance -

At his renewed groan of pain and frustration on finding his right arm completely dead and his left still broken and roped to his chest, the figure clamped a hand over his mouth. On instinct, Harry tried to scream or shout or bite, but the weight pressing onto him was too strong and the edge of the palm pinned the ruin of his nose... his eyes began to water, and he succeeded in thrashing weakly, but couldn't get away from the hand.

Not quite resigned, but determinedly searching all around him for something - anything - that he might be able to do without the use of his limbs, he looked again at the darkness beyond the door frame... the total darkness.

It was the middle of the night. Midnight Matins, to judge by the singing. There was only one person here, trying to free him from the shackles. They used a candle for light, an inconspicuous candle, instead of a bright, flaming torch. They were unceremoniously, clumsily removing him from his restraints.

If Harry had undergone an easier time of it in the cell, his heart would have leapt at the possibility that this person was trying to help him escape. As it was, however, after the prolonged tortures he had endured, the unending starvation since Sander had left, his mind immediately jumped to the possibility that whoever this was had far more sinister intentions.

And he'd never felt quite so helpless.

The final shackle came free - he heard it, but didn't feel it - and Harry wished he could move, wished could spring up, taking the man by surprise, and sprint to his freedom... but instead he simply lay there, hoping the man would be near enough to bite, hoping that the residual stiffness would wane so that he could fight back.

He caught sight of the man's face finally, and was astonished to find himself staring into the crinkled visage of Brother Jacques, who was now pressing a finger to his lips, signalling Harry to be silent.

Could it be..?

The monk removed his hand from Harry's face and used it to pick up the key, folding it into the sleeve of his robe. He turned away, picking up a wooden cup from behind him and holding it to Harry's chin.

_Water..._

He drank greedily, grateful beyond expression for the moisture in his parched mouth and throat, feeling on the brink of incredulous tears.

Could it be..?

"Why?" he mouthed at the monk.

The man stared at him, looking torn, before reaching into the folds of his robes and withdrawing a small, wooden cross on a piece of string. He leaned forwards and pressed it into Harry's cheek... the wood felt warm and clammy against him, and he stared in confusion as the monk pulled the cross away again, with an expression that said the single act had told him all he needed to know.

"But the others - " wheezed Harry, unable to believe what was happening.

His eyes on Harry's lips, the monk shook his head, tapping his earlobe and pointing to the hallway, where the sound of distant singing drifted in.

Harry shook his head, too confused to dare to believe that he wasn't dreaming.

"You're deaf," he muttered.

The old monk ignored him, and put his hands on Harry's arm, which was still numb. He began to drag his hands down it, fast, driving the circulation in it and trying to make it usable - Harry still only barely dared to hope, but after a few minutes - what felt like more - he began to sense pins and needles in the limb, and the distinctive pain of cramp.

"Ok," he wheezed, "the legs. It's working. Do the legs."

The monk ignored him yet again. '_Perhaps he _is_ deaf?' _thought Harry as he motioned down to his legs with his eyes and head, and the monk moved to them. The boy concentrated hard on trying to move the fingers in his hand as feeling began to return. He'd reached the internal decision to simply not over-think what was happening - if this really was what it appeared to be, time would be short. He'd just have to assume Jacques had seen the monks enter the church, slipping away when he could. It didn't matter. This was his opportunity - probably the only one he'd get - and it was now or never.

He managed to make a fist. Fighting the pain, driven by something deep within him, he opened and closed his fingers again and again, driving the stiffness from them, as he started to feel his legs once more.

"Ok," he muttered. "Ok - thank you - I can feel them. Can you get the rope off me?"

He caught the man's eye and used his own to signal about the rope. The monk's trembling hands began to try and fight at the knot in the rough hemp on Harry's left side. The constant bothering of his broken arm made him catch his breath. '_You think _you're _nervous? They'll punish you, sure, but they'll _kill _me.'_

He started trying to lift his arm repeatedly, making it no higher than an inch from the ground, still making fists, and began to wiggle his toes to the extent that he could. The pins and needles pain in his legs was a thousand times worse than it had been for his arm - it felt almost like he'd been beaten continuously for weeks on end with truncheons, from one end of each leg to the other, tenderising them for the upcoming Roast.

At the suddenly very real fear of being burnt alive, he tried harder. It was just as Brother Jacques loosened the knot sufficiently that he managed to use his right arm to pull the ropes away from him. As his trapped limb was freed, a wave of nausea overcame him at the feeling that his twice bent arm invoked.

The monk stood, and from behind him pulled a crumpled, muddy robe into view, dropping it next to Harry. He could barely make out the ruined Hogwarts Crest on them in the low light.

"Alright," he breathed, fighting back the dry retches and the black smears in his sight. "Thank you - _thank _you, Jacques. Can - can you find my wand? Can you bring me my wand?"

He made a waving motion, trying to get it across to the monk, who simply shook his head and pointed at the robes before making a beckoning motion, shuffling out into the black corridor. He left the candle where it was.

"Merlins' boots," breathed Harry at the difficulty in communication, trying to set his arm at the least painful angle in the sling.

Unsuccessful - his arm hurt more than ever and he simply had to stop touching it, swallowing the bile that had risen - he turned his attention to the habit he was wearing. He wished Jacques had brought something sharp with him, for cutting himself out of it would surely have been easier. He gingerly, slowly, wrestled his way from the habit, pulling it off of his shoulders with his one half-functioning arm, removing the sling that held his broken arm and putting it between his teeth to bite down on as he pulled the habit from around the lifeless limb, before sitting up and ignoring the tremendous ache in his back as he pulled his filthy, smeared legs from within it.

He ended up nude against the wall, shivering and fighting the nausea, before reaching towards the Hogwarts robes and began the same difficult process, in reverse.

Cramp caught his foot as he tried to extend his legs. He rubbed it with his arm, the sling in his mouth stifling his moan of agony, before finally managing to get the robe on him. He didn't try to get his broken arm through the sleeve - he was worried he'd black out - and hung the still-tied sling around his neck inside the robes before, in one sweeping movement, pulling his broken arm through into it.

He succumbed to dry retches for a minute, lying on his side with his face against the cold stone floor and with his vision wavering in the darkness, before he was able to try and crawl up to the wall and support himself on his knees.

Yet again, cramp took hold of his foot like a vice grip, and with tears pouring down his face he rubbed it until the pain went away, flexing his toes back and forth all the while. As he readied himself to try and stand, an image came to him - his imaginary magical escape, running through the halls with wand held high; he hissed self-mockingly.

And then he stood. One leg at a time, he dragged his feet beneath him, leaning heavily against the wall, steadying himself all the way until he was on his feet. His legs were still a little numb and ached immensely, but he was up.

He'd started to take steps when Jacques re-entered - Harry thanked the man again, for he'd refilled the wooden cup with water and now gave it to him to drink. Unsteadily, he did so, wondering if all the kindness in St. Martin's-upon-Ouse had been gifted to this one, silent monk and denied to the others.

"Jacques," said Harry, his throat a little less scratchy, making the wand-waving motion again. "I have to find my wand."

The Ex-Cantor's eyes widened and he shook his head.

"I know you don't want me too," said Harry. "I know. But I have to, or I'll die, and all this would have been for nothing. We've got to find it."

The monk stared at him, seeming torn between helping and simply walking away. Harry wanted to let him go - God knew he'd done enough for him, more than enough - but he wouldn't even make it into the courtyard before the singing ended if he was on his own. He needed the help. He searched his addled mind desperately for a way to convince the man, before coming up with something he thought might work.

"Give me the cross," said Harry, pointing at the pocket in the man's habit it had been swept into. "The wooden cross."

Confusion in his eyes, the monk frowned, but reached into his robes and withdrew the tiny crucifix and string. Harry took it from him, putting it around his neck one-handed and tucking it into his robe. He could feel the warm wood against his chest and, despite it being nothing more than a symbolic gesture, did feel slightly comforted.

"God - God will love you for this," he said, before wincing - it sounded like blackmail. Thank Merlin the man couldn't hear him. "You're the true example of a monk. Of - of the image of Saint Martin, helping a peasant. You're a true Christian, and God loves you for what you're doing. Men like - like the Deacon... they aren't God's children. You are."

The monk was staring doubtfully at where the cross would be against his chest, looking more uncertain than ever. Harry cursed the man's deafness and put his working hand to his injured one, pressing the palms together as gently as he could. The man's eyes followed his hand up as he went on to cross himself, then put his hand on his heart.

"_Please_," begged Harry, for both understanding and help.

The mute monk shook his head absently. He didn't seem mollified in the slightest. After a long, torturous moment of Harry trying to think of some way to entreat the man, a seemingly reluctant Brother Jacques moved next to Harry and put his arm over his shoulders, and together they began to move forwards. Despite his age, the old monk was a lot stronger than he looked, and Harry put a little weight on him with no outward effect.

They stopped near the door and the old monk left Harry leaning against the frame, breathing laboured from the exertion, to bend down and pick up the candle. As one, they moved into the hallway, and Harry felt a shiver run between his shoulder blades as they left the cell in darkness.

…

Though the stairs had been a challenge, they reached the cloister fairly quickly. The chapel was groaning with the noise of the singing but the moon was behind cloud and, without the eerie blue light settled across the night, the building didn't look quite so foreboding.

Harry took his arm from Jacques shoulders and thanked him for the fiftieth time. The monk was staring at the church in the heart of the monastery, eyes fearful, expecting the service to end at any moment. How - and why - the monk had hidden his ability to hear for so long baffled Harry. He could only guess at the secrets that this strange, benevolent old man held from the rest of the monastery - he was probably another that knew Old Richard well, and Harry was glad there was at least a single monk in St. Martin's who didn't believe that he'd killed him.

After the man managed to tear his eyes away, he pointed to one of the outbuildings in the murky black. Harry squinted at it - if it was the building he was thinking of, it stood alone and he'd never been in it. He hadn't seen much activity around it either. He didn't know what it was.

"Where is the Dean sleeping?" he hissed. He was whispering out of habit - unnecessarily, from the racket the singing was making. Then he shook his head at his own daftness - what made it unnecessary was the monk's _deafness._

Trying to get his brain in gear he put his hand under his head like a pillow and tried, with a complex series of hand gestures, to ask the same question again to the silent Ex-Cantor. After a moment, Jacques shook his head, pointing again to the outbuilding somewhere in the shadows.

"Is he sleeping in there?" wondered Harry aloud.

Only one way to know for sure.

He turned and patted the front of the monk's habit, mouthing 'Thank you' over and over again, and the old man nodded, seeming preoccupied, and shooed him away. Harry shuffled extremely slowly across the cloister and away from Jacques' candelight, hoping beyond hope that his luck held out and the singing didn't end, flooding the world around him with monks who were determined to kill him, and when he stopped to catch his breath and try to ease the pain in his legs he turned back only briefly towards the doorway he'd emerged from that led to the Refectory.

Brother Jacques was gone, and the space was black.

_'God bless that man_,' Harry thought vehemently, still not quite accepting that everything was really happening. '_God bless that deaf old monk._'

As he moved on in the darkness, quicker now that he was perilously close to the church and wouldn't even be able to hide were the monks to appear, he wondered if he'd ever find out why the man had chosen to help him. Was it solely a case of charity or was there more to it?

He finally reached the other side of the cloister, breathing shakily, and put his hand against the large, splintery door, trying to guess what might be on the other side.

When his hand found a ring-pull he carefully, stiffly opened the door and, as he did so, felt his stomach drop. To his astonishment there was candle-light from within, completely undetectable from the outside, and movement.

Someone was in there. He froze in place, willing his brain to work. '_Do I walk away, or do I go in?'_ he wondered, torn. '_What have I got to lose? Nothing if I walk, everything if I enter...'_

He didn't deliberate for long. His nostrils caught up with him - piercing the soft country air was the smell of animals, and hay, and manure. The movement from inside began to make sense. Taking a deep breath and steadying himself, he moved sideways inside through the crack in the door.

Stables. And horses. Which he'd never even realised were there.

Harry let out a shuddering breath as one of the beasts turned to eye him balefully. He saw the central horse had a saddle on its back, and seemed set up to have a rider this evening, and suddenly wasn't sure whether to thank Jacques or curse him into oblivion... he'd never ridden a horse. More importantly, he'd never planned to.

He cast his eyes around the tiny stable, looking at the candle that was illuminating the entire thing and then onto the shadows in the corner. There was a large, bulky shape at the other end of the building.

Biting his lip, wishing he had more time, he picked the candle up from the alcove and carried it down. It was a large cart, he now saw, almost like a rudimentary carriage. It had an awning over the back part. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that it might belong to the Deacon, and looked inside of it... nothing. No bags or trunks or anything. He looked behind it, remembering a cartoon he'd seen at a child wherein the belongings had been kept on the back of the carriage and young paupers had stolen from them in busy streets... still nothing.

"I'm going to need my wand, Jacques," said Harry to himself, annoyed, wanting nothing more than to get his wand and leave as quickly as he could. He couldn't decide whether to leave without it - a slightly higher chance of survival, he supposed - or risk being imprisoned and burnt... there was always Ollivander, who could in theory make him another one...

But it wasn't really a choice.

He readied himself to go back out into the night, trying to decide whether or not to wait for the service to end and _then _go searching, or take his chances and get in and out of the monastery as soon as possible, but then he noticed the other side of the stable... or more specifically, the set of saddles piled up there.

They were all plain brown leather or cloth. None were the sharp, clean-cut black leather of the saddle currently on the horse. Harry stared between the animal and pile, hardly daring to hope that Jacques might have been _quite _so organised, hardly daring to believe that it might be _that _easy.

He approached the beast after leaving the candle in the alcove, trying to seem confident despite his unease, speaking softly under his breath just as he'd seen people do with dogs and moving up to it. It whinnied slightly but made no move to viciously kill him, so Harry put his hand on the beast's forehead and rubbed it. The animal stared at him dolefully. The boy briefly wondered if it was like a Hippogriff and didn't like being met in the eye, and had brief visions of himself struggling to bow before the animal in the pain he was in.

"Are you the Deacon's horse, horsey?" he whispered, keeping his voice airy and feeling like an idiot as he started to stroke the neck. "Are you the nasty man's horse? Good horsey - hold still - "

His hand moved from the neck to the saddle, wary of any sudden movements from the beast, and then down to the large bags hanging from it. He felt for the connecting strap, still mumbling nothings to it, and released the saddlebag.

It thudded to the ground and Harry moved away, but the horse didn't even bristle. Surprised but still cautious, he thanked Merlin that he seemed to have been supplied with the tamest horse on planet earth. Thinking of the man's savagery, he then had to force the thought of what the Deacon 'training' an animal might look like from his head.

He bent, his legs still aching profusely and protesting the movement, and opened the bag.

Harry felt, mixed in with the exultation, a wave of sadness overcome him. Along with several fat, clinking leather satchels there were nearly twenty 'wands' in the bag, half of which he could tell with a glance were simply innocent twigs. At least ten of the Deacon's victims had been ordinary muggles, burnt as 'witches' at Pierre de Castelnau's command. Just under that figure was the amount of real witches that had been murdered, somehow removed of their wand in perhaps the same way that Harry had been, imprisoned and probably tortured for days in cells beneath a dozen other monasteries...

This realisation, as he tipped the contents of the saddlebag onto the ground, severely dampened the joyous feeling of finding his wand. He picked it up from the pile on the floor and felt the familiar, _whooshing _feeling roll through him at its long-absent touch, but didn't take his eyes from the other wands amongst the hay and satchels.

'_You evil bastard_,' he thought, feeling horrible. '_You evil, evil man, for killing those people. For making this moment feel so guilty_.'

Swallowing hard, fighting back angry tears, he renewed his promise to bring the man to justice. Some day, somehow, he'd make him pay.

His jaw set, he pulled the real wands back into the saddlebag and, after a moment's consideration, did the same with the non-magical ones. He left the coin bags on the floor for the moment.

Feeling anything but a heroic Gryffindor, the first practical thing he did with his wand - his _wand_, finally back in his hand! - was to _Scourgify _himself in a very impolite location, grimacing. He knew he'd probably leave that whole part out when it came to telling Ron and Hemione about his time there.

"_Wingardium Leviosa_," he muttered, relishing feeling of _real magic _running through his veins once more, even if only figuratively, as the saddlebag lifted next to the horse. "_Ligo!"_

The saddlebag reattached itself to the buckle at the side of the horse. With two more quick spells, the satchels of what he assumed was money were back in the bag, which was stuck shut. Harry wanted to find the Circlet, but didn't have time to go searching for it and didn't want to risk summoning it, knowing the Deacon may well have it with him. He remembered what it looked like. He'd probably be alright.

On to further practical matters, he pointed his wand at his face, whispered "_Episkey!"_ and the spell corrected his broken nose in an instant. He grunted - loudly - in pain and staggered backwards, his days old broken nose crunching horribly as it righted itself, and wished he knew a basic pain relieval charm as the spiking feeling lanced through his skull.

He let himself recover. For the moment, he left the blood on his face as it was. It wasn't vital to remove it. He tried to establish whether there was anything else he could do - it was strange, but now he actually had his wand in his hand after so long, he was having to think hard about what exactly to use it for.

Though, he considered darkly, it was a very real possibility that he'd have to _Imperio _the horse. He had no idea how to ride one, or control one.

He didn't think about it for the moment. Despite his sadness at the discovery of the other wands, he was starting to feel giddy now he had his back in hand. For fun, he conjured some birds and watched them fly about at the top of the stable in the shadows - the horses bristled and, with a smile, he vanished the conjurations.

And then the singing in the distant chapel came to an end.

He admonished himself for wasting time, and had a sudden idea as to how to give himself some more. He moved as fast as his injured legs would carry him to the door of the stable and outside, into the darkness, where he could see the dimly flickering candles in the shutters of the chapel not two hundred yards away.

He pointed his wand carefully, aiming with precision, and whispered "_Colloportus!_" at the door of the chapel. He had no way of knowing it had worked, from this distance, but moved back into the stable. Walking over to the horse, he whispered to it again, airy voice less strained this time, and rapidly cast both a cushioning charm and a light sticking charm to the seat of the saddle. He put a bare foot in the first stirrup and awkwardly clambered up, trying not to get himself stuck to it, swinging his other aching leg over with a wince before settling down onto it. He hoped that would be enough to keep him astride.

He looked down at the ground and briefly considered that he was indeed a lot higher up than it looked before trying to figure out how to get the horse to move forwards.

"Go!" he tried, tugging slightly at the beast's mane. It shuffled uncomfortably at his weight. "Ride! Mush!"

At the last, the skin of his heels brushed the horse's flanks and it lurched forward. He yelped a little in surprise, before grabbing the reign and quickly figuring out how to turn it, which was achieved by simply pulling the side he wanted to turn in the direction of. It was awkward in one hand and the horse shook its head slightly, shuffling about more with a whinny, but Harry held firm.

The idea of riding to Scotland was fast becoming more appealing. No more walking aimlessly North, trying to reach a place he had no idea how to get to. No... he'd ride there. On horseback, like a knight.

The horse didn't seem to like this idea quite as much and made it difficult for him, but he cast a _Dissendium! _at the doors and they flung open as he heeled the beast in the flanks again and was almost torn from the sticking charm as it jumped forwards. He was in pain by the time they'd made it twenty feet, and pulled up on the reigns, shouting at the horse to stop which, blessedly, it did. He breathed the night air deeply, his back already hurting from the jolts, pain gripping the spine where it'd not long ago met a cold stone floor, and he cast his eyes up to the church.

The doors were still closed, the candles still lit inside, and Harry imagined he could hear their consternation as they found it impossible to open the doors. They were probably already blaming it on him, he knew, and smiled.

But suddenly images flashed into his head - memories of a burning church, of Sander kneeling in front of an escape, perfectly happy to be burnt alive or crushed or suffocated, the huge 'Brother Pierre', the tormenting Deacon, spitting on him and shouting at him and kicking him... he realised they were all within that building.

Every one of them. Every one but the one who had actually been kind to him, who had saved his life while the rest of the monks there were perfectly willing to let him burn alive. The one monk out of more than fifty.

The thought of the wands came to him, unbidden, as he realised that this was a chance to rid the world of Deacon de Castelnau. Maybe his only chance. He remembered his vow...

The grip on his wand was now slick with sweat and he was barely breathing. He realised he was actually considering it. He was considering killing them all.

_'One spell is all it would take.'_

But in response, the image of a crying family and two dead men in a forest clearing speared through his thoughts. The image of FitzOsbern, desperately trying to put out the unstoppable fire that was consuming a church. The image of Brother Jacques, alone, trying to fight a tremendous pyre that had once been his beloved monastery, from which rang the death cries of his fellow monks and friends. The image of Ron and Hermione, of Hagrid's large, childish features, of Mrs. Weasley, the image of his mum and dad, waving at him from a photograph, and finally of Dumbledore, staring at him, disappointment in his dull eyes through his half-moon spectacles...

He felt disgusted with himself and turned away, steering the horse by its reign, before coming up with something more practical.

When they realised he was gone, they'd come after him. He was pleased with himself for realising this and tried to push down on the self-loathing he was feeling at having actually considered... he shuddered. He turned in the saddle to face the stables and, through the door, could make out the other horses standing passively. He raised his wand and summoned the doors shut, locking them with the same charm, before turning to face the darkness once more.

"_Point Me _Hogwarts," he commanded after a moment, his wand on his palm, and felt a thrill when it span and pointed over the river.

He breathed deeply, feeling as though something important had happened, but he couldn't put his finger on what. He told himself to continue thinking practically - to forget about the monks, for the time being - and concentrate on getting home.

"_Lumos_," he cast, igniting the end of his wand and illuminating the path in front of him. Touching his bare heels lightly to the sides of the horse, he held on tight with his legs, wand aloft, and the beast began to walk away.

He didn't look back at the silent monastery. Fate would either have the Deacon suffer for his sins, or it wouldn't, but he wasn't going to sacrifice any more of himself in his retribution.

He knew, somehow, that he'd meet de Castelnau again. As he rode away on the white monk's horse - his jaw set tight, unseeing eyes cast forward - he wondered how, and why, and when...

And time would tell.

…

_Author's Notes:_

_This chapter was approximately 21,122 words._

_The real Pierre de Castelnau – I won't go into detail about who he was, because it's significant to a later plotline – was actually thin, not fat. Thin as a wraith, in fact. Apologies if this bothers you, but when writing the character I preferred the idea of a glutton, the bone-thin penitent having been over-portrayed in recent media. I also couldn't risk any reader sympathy for him, a trait more associated with frailty than greed. The Cistercian habit, geography and zealous fervour are genuine._

_VoiceoftheNephilim deserves masses of kudos for helping me with this chapter, making some of my ramblings a degree more legible, and for also wanting to go ahead and co-found a gangsta cru._

_I think that's about it. Many thanks for reading; see you next chapter._


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